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THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 



THE 
LIBERAL COLLEGE 



BY 



ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN 

PRESIDENT OF AMHERST COLLEGE 




BOSTON 
MARSHALL JONES COMPANY 

1920 



<&& 






COPYRIGHT- 1920 -BY 
MARSHALL JONES COMPANY 



THE-PIIMPTON-PRESS'NORWOOD'MASS'U^S'A 

OCT -5 1920 

©CI.A597714 



" \ 



To 

E. F. and N. A. L. V. 




PREFACE 

'HE title of this book was chosen by the managing 
editor of the series to which it belongs. It is 
appropriate, I think, that the title page of the 
first of the Amherst Books should thus express the authority 
of the Board and of the purpose by which the series is to 
be dominated. Amherst College enters upon the publi- 
cation of these books with very high hopes. It is willing 
to set aside desires far more compelling than that of a 
writer for his title, if thereby something may be attempted 
in honor of the legend Terras Irradient. 

The editor's justification of the title is that it indicates 
accurately, as it does, the subject-matter of the book. 
The writer, however, would have preferred another title. 
He would have chosen the name "Making Minds," and that 
largely because it invites misunderstanding. I am sure 
the editor will reward the willing submission of the writer 
by allowing him to use a few words in the Preface to indicate 
the notion which he would have liked to express. 

The book itself is a collection of papers and addresses 
dealing with the liberal college. From cover to cover it 
expresses the conviction that liberal study enriches and 
strengthens the lives of individual men and of groups of 
men. It is based upon the belief that for a man and for 
his fellows it is well that he have a good mind, if possible 
an excellent or even a distinguished mind. 

But with respect to such a belief as this misunderstand- 
ings flourish and abound. In general people have a peculiar 
interest in the processes by which they themselves were 
made. And the discussion of those processes and especially 
the suggestion that they might have been better than they 
were does not, for obvious reasons, conduce to calmness 
of mood. Psychologically it is not hard to understand 



viii PREFACE 

why each man yearns to think his college best and hesi° 
tates to agree that changes might make it better. For this 
and for many other reasons men are not thinking thoughts 
when they discuss the teaching process. They are rather 
giving voice to affections, purposes, prejudices, desires; 
and the terms which they employ vary in quite undis- 
coverable ways with the emotional qualities which lie 
behind them. 

In such a field as this misunderstandings are sure to come. 
With respect to them we may take either of two lines of 
action. We may ignore them in the hope that they will 
go away, or we may invite them to make themselves at 
home with the hope that they will lose the hostile quality 
of the alien. My own choice would be that of ready hos- 
pitality. It is good to be as well and as quickly as possible 
acquainted with the misunderstandings which may visit 
you. Acquaintance tends toward understanding and for 
misunderstandings there is no other cure. 

If then the Editor will allow, I should like to present in 
this short Preface three misunderstandings which regularly 
call upon us. I should like also to devote the Introduction 
to a genuine attempt at making their acquaintance. 

If one says that the purpose of the liberal college is to 
make minds, these misunderstandings or, shall I say, 
objections immediately appear. Education, we shall be 
told, should make not minds of men, but Men. And 
again it will be said that it is nonsense to speak of making 
minds or making men; such living things as these must 
grow; they are not made. And finally we shall be told 
that whether the process be one of minds or of men, be one 
of growth or of manufacture, the college has little to do with 
the achievement of the end; the college tends to take 
itself too seriously; men learn to live by living and not by 
spending four short years cut off from life by college walls 
and college customs. 

To consider these misunderstandings will be the chief 
purpose of our Introduction. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Making Minds — An Introduction 3 

Part I. The Determining Purpose 11 

I. WHAT THE LIBERAL COLLEGE IS NOT 13 

II. WHAT THE LIBERAL COLLEGE IS 29 

III. WHAT THE COLLEGE PREPARES FOR 5 1 

IV. MAKING THE MIND OF A NATION 6l 

Part II. The Participants in the Process .... 65 

1. the college as critic 66 

ii. the freedom of the college 84 

iii. student activities in the college .... 97 

Part III. Discussions in Educational Theory . . . 107 

I. LOGIC IN THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM I08 

II. IS MENTAL TRAINING A MYTH ? 1 16 

Part IV. The Curriculum 134 

I. A COURSE FOR FRESHMEN I35 

II. A CURRICULUM FOR A LIBERAL COLLEGE . . . I38 

III. A REORGANIZATION OF THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM . I49 

A Final Word 164 



THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 



THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 



MAKING MINDS — AN INTRODUCTION 

INTRODUCTIONS are of necessity rather formal affairs 
with some regard for rules and proprieties. Now there 
is one rule with respect to the meeting of arguments 
which may at least be mentioned as our misunderstanding 
friends draw near. It is this, — a number of different 
arguments may not properly oppose another argument 
if they are opposed to each other. They have no right to 
ask a common enemy to kill them off if they have within 
themselves the possibility of mutual extermination. In 
a word, arguments must settle their own differences before 
they attempt to settle a common foe. One need not press 
the point; it is sufficient to know that whether pressed or 
not the principle is at work in the inevitable logic of the 
situation. 

I 

The objection that the college should make Men rather 
than Minds is the most aggressive and headstrong of our 
opponents. Boys should be prepared for life, it says, 
not for the reading of books or the spinning of theories. 
Education should be practical; by it bodies should be 
strengthened, friendships should be established, manners 
should be acquired, spirits should be purified, apprecia- 
tions should be enriched and directed, the will should be 
fortified and inspired and subjugated, all the powers of body, 
mind and soul should be so trained and correlated that from 
them shall be made such a man as a man should be. 

This argument is hard to meet because it very discourte- 

3 



4 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

ously gives us at once the feeling of being not merely in 
the wrong but quite disgracefully so. Without intending 
it we seem to have said that bodies should not be strong 
and that wills might just as well be weak, and that ap- 
preciations are of no importance, and that the spirit of man 
is a matter of no concern to us. Why do we seem to have 
said this? It is because the phrase, "Not minds but Men" 
seems to demand as its opposite "Not men but Minds. 
But we had no intention of saying this. We did not ad- 
vocate the making of minds for the sake of opposing the 
making of men. We had rather supposed that the making 
of minds was just a part of the making of men. In fact, 
when we said "Making Minds" we meant "Making the 
minds of Men." Let us then protest at once that we are 
not hostile to the making of men; we are rather modestly 
engaged in it and are meanwhile keeping an eye on the 
third approaching objection which is waiting to jump at 
us for taking too seriously our part in the process. 

This demand that a teacher of physics, for example, 
should make not minds but men is of the same general 
value as would be the assertion that a farmer should grow 
not wheat but men. What is the good of food stuffs, 
one asks; are they not for the feeding, the nourishing of 
men? And if they are, then why does not the farmer 
proceed directly to the end, why waste his time in seed and 
soil and all that care called agriculture; why not make men 
at once; why throw one's hours away on crops? It is a 
sordid soul that values crops above the men for whom 
the crops exist. 

One can imagine a farmer somewhat bewildered by such 
an attack as this. And many a teacher is bewildered too. 
Are men more important than food ? Yes, food is for men. 
Are men more important than minds? Yes, minds are 
for men. Does it then follow that the farmer should grow 
men in his wheat fields, or that teachers of physics should 
construct men in the laboratory rather than make pupils 
wise in the realm of physics? 



MAKING MINDS 5 

The trouble with the argument is that it is so true that 
it cannot help becoming false if one dwells upon it. It is 
the lazy fallacy which confuses ends and means. It is a 
favorite fallacy of practical men in fields with which their 
practice has not made them familiar. It is the fallacy of 
those who say "Give us results" and who have no time to 
inquire what results are wanted nor how they may be 
gotten. It is also the fallacy of the sentimentalists who 
opine that telling a boy to be a man will make him one 
or that willing to be a man is all that one needs in the way 
of training and study. 

But now we must stop calling names and meet our guest 
with proper decorum and respect. He comes suspecting that 
we are hostile to him, that we oppose minds to his men. 
We must try to make him see that this supposed hostility 
is an illusion, a misunderstanding. How shall we do it? 

First let us assure him that we know the limitations of 
the mind and of its training. All the values of life, all 
the things worth while in life are found in the feelings, 
the emotions, the sentiments of men. And further, all the 
ways of realizing these values lie in the realm of will, of 
action. The mind, in the narrow sense, neither feels nor 
acts, neither is value nor makes value. But on the other 
hand the mind is the informing of the feelings and the 
directing of the actions. It is the guide which makes feel- 
ings delicate and true, which makes actions precise and suc- 
cessful. The mind is not all of life but it is the intelligence 
which directs life to the achievement of its ends. This is 
what we mean when we say that intelligence is power — not 
that it acts, but that it makes action successful. It is the 
eye which sees the rapier's mark but not the hand which 
it directs to grasp and thrust the weapon to the spot. 

A second observation follows closely upon the first. We 
see that four short years of teaching minds is only a little 
part of human education. All that men are and do must 
be developed and trained. And in the doing of this all 
human institutions, all human experiences have a part. 



6 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

The home, the church, the school, playmates, friends, 
climate, food, health, employers, servants, social relations 
of every sort, all these are making men, making a man 
for seventy years, making him until his day is done. Amidst 
all this the special training of the college course is rather 
a little thing. At any rate it is a very special thing, as 
special and peculiar a thing as books are in the material 
world, those collections of paper pages with ink-marks 
on them, as special as words are among the actions of men 
and nature, those sounds made by the human throat and 
lips. In terms of quantity the college course is not a major 
part of education. We count it some forty hours a week 
for thirty to forty weeks in each of the four years from 
seventeen or eighteen years of age to twenty-one or twenty- 
two. Not all of one's education is acquired in these hours. 

And now since we are speaking in the spirit of friendship 
rather than of controversy, we must tell our inquiring guest 
what we actually do along this line of his suggestion. There 
are three aspects of our attitude of which he should approve. 

First, we count upon the wider education which precedes 
the college training and upon that which follows it. The 
college experience we recognize as an episode, one of peculiar 
value, and yet as following from earlier experience and as 
leading into later living. In general we must send young 
men back again into the society from which they came, 
not as they were but better trained in mind for that society 
than any other kind of living would have made them. 

Second, we recognize that during these four years, the 
life of the individual student and the social life of the com- 
munity must be maintained, must be kept vigorous, fine, 
and high in quality. A college must be a good place in 
which to live as well as a good place in which to study. 
For this reason we have our chapel and church, our fra- 
ternity houses and dormitories, our athletic games and 
other student activities, our friendships of pupils and 
teachers each with his fellows and each with the members 
of the other group. Taking them all in all. I doubt if 



MAKING MINDS 7 

there are better communities in all our social scheme than 
are our colleges. 

And finally let us make one genuine concession in the 
hope of friendly understanding. Let us admit that when 
we speak of Making Minds the meaning which we give 
to Mind is a very broad one. Judge us by our deeds and 
you will see. Our course of study includes the careful 
training of the body for three of the four years of residence, 
our teaching of music, of drama and of literature seeks 
to inspire as well as to inform the appreciations; (to many 
of us it seems that other arts should make this contribution 
greater than it is); the college discipline or lack of it in- 
tends to bring the will to fairness and to strength of char- 
acter; but more than all things else the teacher, teaching 
his subject, captures his student for the kind of life he 
thinks worth while; to go to college is to live in fellowship 
with students and teachers; it is their personalities which 
give its liberal meaning to the phrase "Making Minds. 

11 

Our second guest comes with the objection that "Mak- 
ing" is not a term to apply to minds; "Minds," he says, 
"are not made; they grow." What shall we answer? 
There is no genuine difference here. Or rather, if there 
is a difference, our critic is right. Only in a certain peculiar 
sense may we speak of making minds. They are not made, 
as if they were constructed, but they are made to grow — 
made, by proper cultivation, to grow properly. 

The objection to external or mechanical descriptions of 
education is a thoroughly valid one. No interpretation 
of teaching is more fallacious than that which regards the 
teacher as giving learning or knowledge or wisdom to 
the pupil, putting this desirable attribute into him. The 
teacher may feel wisdom going out of him in the teaching 
process, but, strictly speaking, he cannot be sure that the 
pupil is taking it in. The relation of teacher and pupil 
is always a somewhat mystical one. Learning is chiefly 



8 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

by imitation or by contagion. If a teacher is working 
and is influential, pupils will learn to work; if a teacher is 
trying to make others work, pupils will learn to do that too; 
if a teacher loves wisdom wisely, pupils will love it as well. 

And yet we must not let the principle of growth run 
riot. A college is not a hot-house in which the whole 
being with all its powers is to be forced into early flowering. 
College teachers are men of special powers; they are quite 
different in type from other men; they have very different 
and very special lessons to impart. It is essential that 
they do their special work because they can do it and others 
cannot, and most of all because the opportunity for it is 
very brief. The mere establishing of an "atmosphere" 
for student growth is not enough. The "aromatic" theory 
of education is almost as bad and certainly far more un- 
wholesome than the mechanical one. A college is a place 
where something is to happen and to happen definitely 
because certain men know what they intend, and are de- 
termined that what they intend shall be accomplished. 

In this connection it may be noted that with respect 
to the relation of learning to hTe there are three types of 
able teachers. Of these three types, two should be kept 
away from a college by every device which the art of man 
can imagine. The third should be sought after as men of 
old sought after the philosopher's stone or the secret of 
perpetual youth, though one would hope with somewhat 
more success. 

First there are men who are strong among their fellows 
but whose strength comes from sources other than abstract 
knowledge. They are men who have built up power by 
experience in practical affairs, by sentiment, by will, or in 
any other way than by the use of books and other instru- 
ments of study. 

Second, there are men well versed in books, learned in 
scholarship of certain sorts, masters of some special aspects 
of a field of knowledge, who are yet negligible as men among 
their fellows; no one feels them to be important. 



MAKING MINDS 9 

Both these types of men the college should avoid when 
choosing teachers — avoid them as a merchant would 
shun the advertising of a competitor's wares. The college 
is engaged in making men stronger and finer by means of 
learning. It must not then take as its agents men who 
achieve strength primarily in other ways, nor men who 
have failed to achieve it in this way. As against these 
the college teacher of the third type is a man who is power- 
ful among his fellows but whose power springs from the 
studying which he has done, from the learning which he 
loves and is. If teachers are of this type we may let young 
people grow in their presence with the assurance that they 
will grow properly in the special way in which a college 
seeks to make a student grow. 

in 

Our third objection has already had its say. In fact 
we have been speaking for it or it for us as we have sought 
to come to understanding with its fellows. 

The college training is a limited, special thing. It 
is not all of education, it is not even all the education 
which one receives during the four years of its duration. 
And yet it counts — counts heavily in making men, in 
making groups of men. Out of the quiet little places where 
men and boys assemble for study of human life and of the 
world — out of those places has shone forth a light which 
has illumined human life, which has made clearer the world 
in which we live. These colleges are neither big nor strong 
nor independent in external ways. They are like nervous 
centres in an organism, — not very large in bulk, not self- 
sufficient, not adequate for action in the world of things 
and facts. And yet they are in charge of action, decide 
what it shall be, and see that it is done. Men everywhere 
are making human life, are making mankind to be a 
stronger, finer thing than it has been. And in the doing 
of that task, they choose to set aside some quiet groups 
for Making Minds. Those groups are Liberal Colleges. 



PART I 
THE DETERMINING PURPOSE 

THESE four papers are four different attempts to 
express the notion which underlies liberal college 
teaching. 

The first paper, "What the College is Not," was given 
at the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of Alle- 
gheny College on June 23, 191 5. It was the closing paper 
of a long series dealing with the work of the American 
College. It is a study of the purpose of the college as re- 
vealed in the minds of its founders. It challenges the 
statement that the old college, having as a major aim the 
educating of ministers, was therefore professional in intent. 
It asks what kind of education was regarded as good for the 
ministers of older days and may be equally good for those 
of a later time. 

The second paper, "What the College is," was given as 
an inaugural address of the President of Amherst College, 
October 16, 191 2. It is a consideration of the purpose of 
the college as perceived by the college teacher. It seeks, 
therefore, to define the college endeavor as it is construed 
and felt by the teachers and scholars who, in the deepest 
sense, are the college. 

The third paper, "What does the College Prepare for," 
is a popular talk which has been given many times to differ- 
ent audiences and perhaps, alas, more than once to the 
same audience. It is intended primarily to state the 
purpose of the college to persons who are not familiar with 
college teaching, or who, having had such familiarity, have 
lost it. It is a controversial paper making its points, or 
trying to make them, over-sharply as one is tempted to do 



12 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

when speaking to audiences at whom one has only a single 
chance, or with whose point of view one is radically out of 
touch. 

The fourth paper, "Making the Mind of a Nation," is 
an extract from a speech delivered at an Amherst Alumni 
banquet in Boston, February 4, 1916. It tries to indicate to 
the graduates of a college what part they have to play in 
building up the life of a nation. It demands that we 
achieve for the nation as a whole the same intellectual 
integrity and coherence which every good teacher seeks to 
fix upon the spirit of the individual student. 



WHAT THE LIBERAL COLLEGE IS NOT 

I MUST begin this paper by asking a question — a ques- 
tion addressed to the audience. The answer is a matter of 
vital concern to me. I wish to ask you whether from one 
statement which I shall give another logically follows. If 
we say that everything that could be said about the Ameri- 
can college has been said, does it follow that there is noth- 
ing more to say ? My own opinion is that it does not follow 
at all and I appeal to the science of logic for justification. 
That science tells us that whatever has been said in one 
way can be said again in another, and that perhaps just 
such translation into other forms is the chief task of what we 
call thinking. And especially logic tells us that whatever 
has been said in affirmative terms may often, to great ad- 
vantage, be expressed in negative terms. 

If it is truly said that "John is in Boston," it is also safe 
to remark that "John is not in New York," and this latter 
statement may be of much greater importance to some of 
John's friends. There is, of course, a difficulty, namely, 
that it is hard to exhaust the content of the negative judg- 
ment. When once you start on this process the trouble is 
not to find something to say but to tell where to stop in 
the illimitable expanse which lies before you. It is well 
enough to say that John is not in New York, but if you 
proceed to tell all the places in which John is not, consider- 
able time must be allowed for the operation. While, there- 
fore, I insist that this logical principle be accepted in order 
that I may have a subject to talk about, I beg the audience 
not to be terrified by its possibilities. For general purposes, 
logical principles must be applied sparingly and with dis- 

13 



i 4 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

cretion. It is quite possible to have too much of a good 
thing. 

But the one point on which I do insist is that in spite of 
all the wisdom of these ten wise men who have preceded me 
there is still something left to consider. They have told 
you what the college is. I may try to tell you what it is 
not. They have told you what the college has, what it 
does, what it has accomplished, what it dreams, what it 
will be in the days to come. Somewhere within the field 
of what it has not, what it does not do, what it has not done, 
what it does not dream, what it will not be — somewhere 
within this field, for which one might claim infinite time, 
there lies the subject of this paper. 

If, then, we were with any fullness to define the function 
of the college in negative terms it would be necessary to 
show and to explain that the college is not a high school, 
not a professional school, not a university, nor any part 
thereof. But everyone knows that there are many kinds 
of high school, many types of professional school, many 
separate schools within a university. If we should discuss 
each one of these separatim et seriatim, showing that 
the college is not any one of them, is different from them 
all, I fear that the consequence for you would be much 
weariness of the flesh and great vexation of the spirit. 
But again the kindly science of logic will hurry to our 
rescue. That science has another valuable principle, viz., 
that there is no sense in denying a statement unless someone 
has asserted it. What assertions, then, of the identity 
of the college with other institutions are just now being 
made with sufficient insistence to demand our attention? 
There are teachers who seem to find little difference between 
the college and the high school, but their lack of perception 
is not very important. We are just emerging from a period 
in which the college has been regarded as a part of the 
university and has been identified with the whole in essential 
attitude and spirit. But the day of that confusion is 
rapidly closing. The one confusion which does today 



WHAT THE LIBERAL COLLEGE IS NOT 15 

threaten our understanding of the function of the college 
is that which identifies it with the professional school, 
which declares that there is no genuine education which 
is not really professional, which characterizes the belief 
in a "liberal education," separate from and independent 
of vocational and professional study, as an idle creation 
of dream and fancy. In these pragmatic days such a 
confusion as this is likely to spread far and wide. It is 
not the only instance of pragmatic thinking which just 
now threatens the clarity of our educational policy, but it 
is an especially dangerous one because - strikes at the 
very roots of all our liberal teaching. Amid these days 
of celebration and study of the American liberal college, 
I should like to smite as hard as I can hit at this heresy 
which denies the very belief on which that college is built. 



The heresy is hard to meet just now because in a sense 
it catches us ofF our balance. Under the influence of the 
university ideal the colleges had been saying to their stu- 
dents, "Study anything you like; all knowledge is good; 
in fact, all knowledge is equally good; make your choice, 
follow your bent; if only you keep going in any direction 
a liberal education is assured." But as against this, we 
are seeing more and more clearly every day that the con- 
tent of a liberal education is not thus indefinite and in- 
determinate, that there is an intellectual culture which one 
must master if he is to travel the way of liberal education. 
And in our enthusiasm we have been crying: "Back to 
the good old college of earlier days, away with the extrava- 
gances of election and specialization, let us return again 
to the fathers, to the requirements which they established, 
to the college which they founded." And here it is that 
the subtle and dangerous heresy finds its opportunity. 
"Do you wish definite and coherent requirements?" it 
asks. "Very well, you will find them in the professional 



16 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

school." And if we protest that these are not the require- 
ments that we had in mind, that they are not liberal but 
technical, then there descends upon us a crushing and 
bewildering argument. "You wish to return to the spirit 
and practice of the old colonial college," it says; "very 
well, do so, but first recognize that the college which you 
imitate was itself a professional school. The colonial 
forefathers were not wasting idle dreams on this airy nothing 
which you call 'liberal training.' They needed ministers 
for their churches and so they founded colleges to train 
those ministers. The colleges which they established were 
in essential purpose schools of divinity, schools to train 
young men for the profession of the ministry. They 
were devised for a special purpose and the forefathers were 
shrewd enough to see to it that that purpose was realized." 
And from this assertion as its premise, the argument pro- 
ceeds to its conclusion. 

"The old college was professional in spirit; then so too 
should they be who imitate it in spirit. But the old college 
intended to train for only one of the professions. To that 
end all its courses of study, all its methods of teaching, 
were adapted. It will never do to give the same courses 
of study, the same teaching, to the boys who are planning 
for other professions. Loyalty to the old college demands 
that for each profession its own special system of prepa- 
ration be devised; we in our day must do for lawyers, 
engineers, physicians, architects, for each of these what the 
fathers in their day did for the students of divinity." So 
by the argument the college becomes simply a collection 
of professional schools; liberal education as a thing apart 
has disappeared. And we arrive at a new definition of the 
American liberal college, — it is an institution which some 
people had mistakenly believed to exist. 

In considering the effect of such an argument as this it 
is necessary to take into account the secondary result as 
well as the primary. The first effect, as in the case of all 
honest conflicts with convincing arguments, is that you 



WHAT THE LIBERAL COLLEGE IS NOT 17 

find yourself knocked down. The second stage of the 
experience, however, reveals two facts: (1) that you can 
get up again and (2) that you are not hurt, indeed that you 
are rather exhilarated by what has happened. This sec- 
ondary stage is proof positive that you have not been hit 
by anything solid. At this time, it is in order to inquire 
what it was which, at the moment of impact, gave such an 
impression of solidity. 

The most interesting feature of the argument is that the 
premise on which it depends is not true. The premise 
asserts that, in the sense in which we now use the term, 
the colonial college was a professional school. But it was 
not, nor was it intended to be. The supposed evidence 
for the assertion is simply a confusion as to the meaning of 
another statement which is true. There is no doubt that 
one of the primary motives of the founders of the early 
colleges was to provide for the education of the clergy. 
But the assertion under discussion is not identical with this, 
nor does it follow from it. And apart from questions of 
inference, the plain facts of record concerning the purpose 
of the founders forbid the suggested interpretation of their 
intention. He who would hold to this interpretation must 
maintain two assertions concerning our colonial forefathers: 
(1) that they did not mean what they said, and (2) that 
they did not get what they paid for. My impression is 
that the antecedent probability is in both cases strongly 
against the maker of the statements. 

With regard to the purpose which the colleges were 
intended to further, there are clear expressions in the 
charters under which they were established. The assertion 
under discussion is that these colleges were established to 
give professional training to ministerial students. The 
charter of Harvard College, granted in 1650, defines the 
aim as "for the advancement of all good literature, arts, 
and sciences." The new articles of 1780, reviewing the 
achievements of the college, say "in which University 
many persons of great eminence have, by the blessing of 



1 8 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

God, been initiated in those arts and sciences which qualified 
them for public employments both in Church and State." 

The charter of Yale University, the Collegiate School of 
Connecticut, describes it as a school "wherein youth may 
be instructed in the arts and sciences, who through the 
blessing of Almighty God may be fitted for Public employ- 
ment both in Church and Civil State." The charter of the 
Academy and Charitable School in the Province of Penn- 
sylvania approves the project, "hoping that this academy 
may prove a nursery of wisdom and virtue, and that it 
will produce men of dispositions and capacities beneficial 
to mankind in the various occupations of life." The charter 
of Kings College in New York provides for the instruction 
and education of youth in the learned languages and in 1 
the liberal arts and sciences. The announcement reads in 
part as follows: 

"A serious, virtuous, and industrious Course of Life 
being first provided for, it is further the Design of this 
College, to instruct and perfect the Youth in the Learned 
Languages, and in the Arts of Reasoning exactly, of Writing 
correctly and Speaking eloquently; And in the Arts of 
Numbering and Measuring, of Surveying and Navigation, 
of Geography and History, of Husbandry, Commerce, and 
Government; and in the Knowledge of all Nature in the 
Heavens above us, and in the Air, Water, and Earth around 
us, and the various Kinds of Meteors, Stones, Mines, and 
Minerals, Plants and Animals, and of every Thing useful 
for the Comfort, the Convenience, the Elegance of Life, 
in the chief Manufactures relating to any of these things; 
And finally, to lead them from the Study of Nature, to the 
Knowledge of themselves, and of the God of Nature, and 
their Duty to Him, themselves, and one another; and every 
Thing that can contribute to their true Happiness, both 
here and hereafter." 

Surely this is a strange course of study for a divinity school 



WHAT THE LIBERAL COLLEGE IS NOT 19 

One of the most illuminating cases is that of Brown 
University. The expressed intention of the founders of 
Brown University was "to establish a seminary of polite 
literature subject to the Government of the Baptists," 
and beyond question they were planning for the education 
of their own candidates for the ministry. But does this 
mean that they planned to give professional theological 
training in the college? If so, why is it specified that 
youth of all religious denominations shall be accepted? 
Was it intended that Congregationalists and Episcopalians 
should become Baptist ministers? And why is it so defi- 
nitely stated that "the Sectarian differences of opinions 
shall not make any Part of the Public and Classical In- 
struction?" Is it customary in a divinity school to forbid 
the discussion of the tenets of the sect by which the school 
is established? There was no such restriction when the 
first divinity school was established at Andover in 1807, 
for then the project was delayed until the founders could 
agree what creed should be taught, and until it had been 
voted that each professor should assent to the creed which 
the Hopkinsians had prepared. Is there not a different 
motive here from that expressed in the charter of Brown 
which says, "Into this Liberal and Catholic Institution 
shall never be admitted any Religious Tests but on the 
Contrary all the Members hereof shall for ever enjoy full 
free Absolute and uninterrupted Liberty of Conscience"? 
In 1770 the trustees of the new college in Rhode Island 
voted "that the children of Jews may be admitted to the 
institution and intirely enjoy the freedom of their own 
religion without any constraint or imposition whatever." 
Was it in order that they might be prepared for the priest- 
hood of their own church, or was it in the hope that the free 
and unhampered dialectic of their own Jewish faith might 
bring them eventually into the Baptist pulpit? 

I have given only a few quotations from the charters 
and early statutes, but on these we may safely rest the case 
as to the purpose of the founders of the colonial colleges. 



J 



20 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

Some people are saying to-day that the intention was to 
give technical training for the ministry. The charters say 
that the colleges were established to give teaching in liter- 
ature, the arts, and sciences, with the expectation that this 
teaching would be of value both in church and state, in all 
the various occupations into which young men might go. 
For my own part, the evidence of the charters is the more 
convincing. I am inclined to think that the colonial fore- 
fathers knew what they meant and meant what they said. 
But now for the test of the work done. Whatever they 
said, did the colleges actually train men for the ministry 
in the sense in which professional schools are now preparing 
them for separate occupations? In his book on Educational 
Reform, President Eliot records that in the ten years from 
1761 to 1770 the percentage of ministers among the gradu- 
ates of Harvard College was twenty-nine, among those of 
Yale thirty-two, and among those of Princeton forty-five. 
In the first thirty-nine classes graduated from Brown only 
twenty-five per cent of the members entered the ministry. 
Now what shall we say of the seventy-one per cent at 
Harvard, the sixty-eight per cent at Yale, the fifty-five 
per cent at Princeton, and the seventy-five per cent at 
Brown? These men were planning to practice law, medi- 
cine, teaching, business. Why did they go to a divinity 
school? Did they think that a man who is ready for the 
ministry is ready for anything? The statement is perhaps 
true, but hardly relevant. I venture to suggest that their 
real opinion was that expressed in the charters we have 
quoted, viz.: that the education which the college gave 
was regarded as of value to a man whatever the profession 
into which he might go. If it be urged that there were 
no other schools to which they could go, I should reply 
that in that case, if they had wanted something else, they 
would have made protest long and loud, and would have 
demanded changes in the old colleges or the establishment 
of new ones. But a record of the attitude of the lay gradu- 
ates of our colleges is not one of fault-finding and protest. 



WHAT THE LIBERAL COLLEGE IS NOT 21 

Rather have they shown unswerving loyalty and gratitude, 
and because of their faith in the college and its teaching, 
they have poured out the wealth which has enlarged the 
college to proportions of which its founders never dreamed. 
Benefactors and graduates alike have believed in non- 
professional education, and have believed they were 
receiving it. He who says that they have paid for pro- 
fessional education says that they have paid for what 
they thought they were not getting. Knowing them as 
I do, I find the statement hard to accept. 

The point just made presents itself in another form when 
viewed in relation to present conditions. To the old col- 
lege there went students planning to enter all the pro- 
fessions, and they found there the education which they 
sought. Of what professional school is it true to-day that 
candidates for the other professions go to it for training? 
Are there many law students in the medical schools, many 
engineering students in the divinity schools, many archi- 
tects in the schools of music? Would it not be a new type 
of engineering school which should attract forty-five, 
fifty-five, seventy, or seventy-five per cent of students 
going into other professions? I think that if we found an 
engineering school of that type we should begin to give it 
another name, should recognize it as having a different 
function from the one we had assigned it, should take 
away from it the name "professional" and call it "liberal," 
a school in which are to be found studies and teaching of 
value to a man whatever his profession may be. To call 
such a school technical or professional is simply to twist 
terms out of all resemblance to their ordinary meanings. 
It indicates a confusion of thought which demands more 
careful analysis of the argument than we have yet given. 
It will be worth while to examine it more closely. 

The argument as it stands is one of the most common 
types of fallacy. It says, "The colonial college prepared 
men for the ministry; hence it did nothing else." It is the 
argument "A is B, hence A is only B;" or again, it is, "If an 



22 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

object have a given quality, then it has no other quality.'' 
"Charles Darwin was an Englishman, hence of course he 
was not a biologist." "Spinoza was a grinder of lenses, 
hence he cannot have been a philosopher." But Darwin 
was a biologist in spite of the argument; and Spinoza did 
dominate the thought of Europe, even while grinding 
lenses in his garret. The trouble with the argument is 
that the conclusion does not follow; there is no logical 
connection between conclusion and premise. A may be B 
and yet be also C and D as well. A college may be a good 
place for a young man who plans to enter the ministry and 
may yet have qualities and purposes of which that state- 
ment is in no sense an adequate description. It may well 
be that its value for ministerial students is only one phase of 
its total and fundamental function. That this is true is 
already apparent from its appeal to students of other 
professions. If we can now define this total appeal, the 
confusion should disappear and the modicum of truth 
which the argument contains should separate itself out 
from the vast error in which that truth has been involved. 

The real motive of the founders of the early colleges, so 
far as it concerned students for the ministry, appears in 
the account given by Walter Cochrane Bronson in his 
History of Brown University. The Baptists, he tells us, 
were eager to have a college under their own control, to 
which their ministerial students might go. But why? 
Was it because they were not sufficiently supplied with 
ministers, or that the candidates were unable to secure 
the technical training needed for their profession? Not 
at all. The reason, he tells us, was that at the time Brown 
was established "there were only two Baptist ministers in 
all New England who had what is called a liberal education; 
and they were not clear in the doctrines of grace." Now 
in accordance with the custom of the time, the leaders of 
the denomination could easily provide for the professional 
training of their boys by placing them in the charge of older 
men who regularly gave such instruction to their appren- 



WHAT THE LIBERAL COLLEGE IS NOT 23 

tices. But they recognized that the denomination could 
not hold its own, could not achieve its purpose in the com- 
munity unless its ministers were men of power and intelli- 
gence, men who could lead and dominate the men about 
them. And so the Baptist Church provided for the edu- 
cation of its young men who were candidates for the 
ministry. Did it provide for their technical theological in- 
struction? The charter of the college specifically denies this. 
The purpose was to educate ministers, — but in what sense? 
Our opponents have interpreted the purpose as that of 
educating men to be ministers. The real purpose was that 
of educating ministers to be men. And at the same time 
by the same methods colleges were educating lawyers to be 
men, and teachers, physicians, and business men to be 
men. The same argument which proves the old college 
to have been a divinity school would prove it to be a law 
school, a medical school, a school of pedagogy, a business 
school. But the argument proves too much. There is a 
limit to the number of different things a single thing can 
be. The old college did educate ministers just as it edu- 
cated candidates for other professions, but it did not give 
to each of these groups a different education. It was 
dealing with something common to them all, and so it gave 
to them all the same instruction, — the culture of a liberal 
education. 

11 

I think it is clear that the issue we are discussing rests 
upon the interpretation of a phrase — "founded for the 
education of ministers." There is no doubt that the phrase 
expresses in large measure the purpose of the early colleges. 
But what does it mean? It is amazing to see how, in the 
face of definite records to the contrary, this statement has 
been taken to mean that the colleges were schools of divin- 
ity. But the phrase admits of another interpretation which 
has the advantage of agreeing with the records. What does 
it mean to teach a minister? Does it mean only to teach 



2 4 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

him to be a minister? He has many other things to learn 
besides that. He is taught by his wife, taught by his 
children, by his friends, and by his enemies. But the 
caddie who teaches him to play golf does not thereby be- 
come a member of a faculty of divinity; he may even not 
be a professor of religion. A school for the deaf does not 
necessarily teach deafness, nor does a school for foreigners 
usually teach them to be foreign. A school for anybody 
may undertake to teach him what he needs to know. Our 
colonial forefathers were persuaded that ministers as well 
as other men need knowledge of things outside their pro- 
fession, need knowledge of the arts and sciences, and it was 
that belief which found expression in the colleges which 
they established. 

The argument which we have been attacking has told us 
to follow the example of the colonial college. If I under- 
stand at all the purpose of the modern liberal college that 
is just what it is doing. There is a vast difference in in- 
tellectual content as between the old college and the new, 
but the two institutions are at one in the belief in the value 
of knowledge as the guide of human life, and in the con- 
viction that certain elements of knowledge are of common 
value to all men whatever their differences of occupation 
or trade. 

I should like to have the privilege of attempting one last 
restatement of this conviction in positive terms before 
this paper is closed. 

in 

In the old colonial community, the clergyman, as in 
lesser degree the lawyer and the teacher, was the man of 
ideas. He was no mere teacher of the gospel and tender 
of the parish. While his people lived their lives it was 
his task to reflect upon their living, to formulate the be- 
liefs on which it was based, to study the conditions by which 
it was molded, to bring to clearness the problems by which 
it was faced, to study the moral, social, economic, political 



WHAT THE LIBERAL COLLEGE IS NOT 25 

situations of which it was constituted. It was his part 
and the part of men of like intellectual development to 
attempt to understand the lives which other men were 
living with lesser degrees of understanding. It was his 
task to serve as prophet and seer, as guide and counselor 
of his people. 

It was for this task that the liberal college intended to 
prepare him. And in these latter days, as the scope of 
education has been extended more and more broadly, 
the same liberal education has been given to great numbers 
of our young men, whatever the professions they are plan- 
ning to enter. At the present time a very small percentage 
of our college graduates become ministers; more than half 
of them enter into some form of business occupation. But 
whether they are to be in business or in the ministry, the 
same education must be given them, since the new com- 
munity has the same need as had the old of understanding 
itself, of stating itself in terms of ideas. 

This fundamental belief of liberal education can be 
stated in terms of two principles. The first is shared by 
both liberal and technical teaching. The second applies 
to liberal education alone. The principles are these: 
(1) that activity guided by ideas is on the whole more 
successful than the same activity without the control of 
ideas, and (2) that in the activities common to all men the 
guidance by ideas is quite as essential as in the case of those 
which different groups of men carry on in differentiation 
from one another. 

The first principle applies to all higher education. We 
recognize that human deeds may be done in either of two 
ways, — first, by habit, by custom, by tradition, by rule 
of thumb, just as they always have been done; or, on the 
other hand, under the guidance of study, of investigation, 
of ideas and principles by which men attempt to discover 
and to formulate knowledge as to how these activities can 
best be done. Now all higher education, liberal or pro- 
fessional, rests on the belief that on the whole an activity 



26 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

which is understood will be more successful than one which 
is not understood. Knowledge pays; intelligence is power. 
The liberal school and the professional are, however, 
separated by their choice of the activities which each shall 
study. Every professional school selects some one special 
group of activities carried on by the members of one special 
trade or occupation and brings to the furtherance of these 
the full light of intellectual understanding and guidance. 
The liberal school, on the other hand, takes as its content 
those activities which all men carry on, those deeds which 
a man must do in virtue of the fact that he is a man; and 
within this field it seeks to achieve the same enlightenment 
and insight. The liberal college would learn and teach 
what can be known about a man's moral experience, our 
common speech, our social relations, our political insti- 
tutions, our religious aspirations and beliefs, the world of 
nature which surrounds and molds us, our intellectual and 
aesthetic strivings and yearnings — all these, the human 
things that all men share, the liberal school attempts to 
understand, believing that if they are understood, men can 
live them better than they would live them by mere tra- 
dition and blind custom. But one of the terrible things 
about our generation is that the principle which it accepts 
so eagerly in the field of the vocation it refuses and shuns 
in the deeper things of human living. I have known fathers, 
planning for the training of a son, who would see to it that 
in the preparation for his trade every bit of knowledge he 
can have is supplied him. If the boy is to be a dyer of 
cloth, then he must study the sciences that understand 
that process. All that can be known about the nature of 
fabrics, the constitution of dyestuffs, the processes of 
application and development of the dye — not one bit of 
all this may be lacking from the teaching of the boy. To 
put him into the shop without that knowledge, to let him 
learn by imitation, pick up the rule of thumb, follow the 
ways of master workmen of the trade — to do that would 
be to make him only a workman, one who can do what 



WHAT THE LIBERAL COLLEGE IS NOT 27 

has been done, can do what he is told to do. But the 
father is not content with this. His boy must understand 
and know the trade so that he may be the leader and the 
guide, may give the orders rather than obey them. But 
how often the same father is unwilling that his boy attempt 
to understand his own religion, his own morals, his own 
society, his own politics! In these fields, surely the father's 
opinions are good enough! Keep the boy's mind at rest 
regarding his religion and his economics; what has been 
believed before had better still be believed! It may be 
bad for business, may interfere with a boy's success if he 
becomes too much interested in the fundamental things of 
life! And so such parents invite us to leave the universal 
things, the things most sacred and significant, to blindness, 
to the mere drift of custom, to tradition, and rule of thumb. 
And here it is that the liberal college again asserts its loyalty 
to the men who founded the older institutions. Those men 
had intellectual faith; they believed that it is worth while 
to know the life of man, and so they studied it and taught 
it to their pupils. I know that I speak for the teachers 
and the administrators of the liberal college here represented 
to-day when I pledge anew our loyalty to the men in whose 
footsteps we follow. So far as we can bring it about, the 
young people of our generation shall know themselves, shall 
know their fellows, shall think their way into the common 
life of their people, and by their thought shall illumine 
and direct it. If we are not pledged to that, then we have 
deserted the old standard; we are apostates from the 
faith. But I think that a good many of us are still loyal. 
We welcome every new extension of vocational instruction. 
We know that every man should have some special task 
to do and should be trained to do that task as well as it 
can possibly be done. The more the special trades and 
occupations are guided and directed by skill and knowledge 
the more will human life succeed in doing the things it 
plans to do. But by the same principle we pledge ourselves 
to the study of the universal things in human life, the 



28 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

things that make us men as well as ministers and tradesmen. 
We pledge ourselves forever to the study of human living 
in order that living may be better done. We have not 
yet forgotten that fundamentally the proper study of man- 
kind is Man. 



II 

WHAT THE LIBERAL COLLEGE IS 

IN the discussions concerning college education there is 
one voice which is all too seldom raised and all too often 
disregarded. It is the voice of the teacher and the scholar, 
of the member of the college faculty. It is my purpose 
to devote this address to a consideration of the ideals of 
the teacher, of the problems of instruction as they present 
themselves to the men who are giving the instruction. 
And I do this not because I believe that just now the teachers 
are wiser than others who are dealing with the same ques- 
tions, but rather as an expression of a definite conviction 
with regard to the place of the teacher in our educational 
scheme. It is, I believe, the function of the teacher to 
stand before his pupils and before the community at large 
as the intellectual leader of his time. If he is not able to 
take this leadership, he is not worthy of his calling. If the 
leadership is taken from him and given to others, then the 
very foundations of the scheme of instruction are shaken. 
He who in matters of teaching must be led by others is not 
the one to lead the imitative undergraduate, not the one 
to inspire the confidence and loyalty and discipleship on 
which all true teaching depends. If there are others who 
can do these things better than the college teacher of to- 
day, then we must bring them within the college walls. 
But if the teacher fs to be deemed worthy of his task, then 
he must be recognized as the teacher of us all, and we must 
listen to his words as he speaks of the matters entrusted 
to his charge. 

In the consideration of the educational creed of the 
teacher I will try to give, first, a brief statement of his 

29 



3 o THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

belief; second, a defense of it against other views of the 
function of the college; third, an interpretation of its 
meaning and significance; fourth, a criticism of what seem 
to me misunderstandings of their own meaning prevalent 
among the teachers of our day; and finally, a suggestion 
of certain changes in policy which must follow if the belief 
of the teacher is clearly understood and applied in our 
educational procedure. 

i 

First, then, What do our teachers believe to be the aim 
of college instruction? Wherever their opinions and con- 
victions find expression there is one contention which is 
always in the foreground, namely, that to be liberal a college 
must be essentially intellectual. It is a place, the teachers 
tell us, in which a boy, forgetting all things else, may set 
forth on the enterprise of learning. It is a time when a 
young man may come to awareness of the thinking of his 
people, may perceive what knowledge is and has been and 
is to be. Whatever light-hearted undergraduates may say, 
whatever the opinions of solicitous parents, of ambitious 
friends, of employers in search of workmen, of leaders in 
church or state or business, — whatever may be the beliefs 
and desires and demands of outsiders, — the teacher 
within the college, knowing his mission as no one else can 
know it, proclaims that mission to be the leading of his 
pupil into the life intellectual. The college is primarily 
not a place of the body, nor of the feelings, nor even of the 
will; it is, first of all, a place of the mind. 

ii 

Against this intellectual interpretation of the college 
our teachers find two sets of hostile forces constantly at 
work. Outside the walls there are the practical demands 
of a busy commercial and social scheme; within the college 
there are the trivial and sentimental and irrational mis- 
understandings of its own friends. Upon each of these 



WHAT THE LIBERAL COLLEGE IS 31 

our college teachers are wont to descend as Samson upon 
the Philistines, and when they have had their will, there 
is little left for another to accomplish. 

As against the immediate practical demands from with- 
out, the issue is clear and decisive. College teachers know 
that the world must have trained workmen, skilled oper- 
atives, clever buyers and sellers, efficient directors, re- 
sourceful manufacturers, able lawyers, ministers, physicians 
and teachers. But it is equally true that in order to do 
its own work, the liberal college must leave the special and 
technical training for these trades and professions to be 
done in other schools and by other methods. In a word, 
the liberal college does not pretend to give all the kinds of 
teaching which a young man of college age may profitably 
receive; it does not even claim to give all the kinds of in- 
tellectual training which are worth giving. It is com- 
mitted to intellectual training of the liberal type, whatever 
that may mean, and to that mission it must be faithful. 
One may safely say, then, on behalf of our college teachers, 
that their instruction is intended to be radically different 
from that given in the technical school or even in the pro- 
fessional school. Both these institutions are practical in 
a sense in which the college, as an intellectual institution, is 
not. In the technical school the pupil is taught how to do 
some one of the mechanical operations which contribute 
to human welfare. He is trained to print, to weave, to 
farm, to build; and for the most part he is trained to do 
these things by practice rather than by theory. His pos- 
session when he leaves the school is not a stock of ideas, 
of scientific principles, but a measure of skill, a collection 
of rules of thumb. His primary function as a tradesman 
is not to understand but to do, and in doing what is needed 
he is following directions which have first been thought out 
by others and are now practised by him. The technical 
school intends to furnish training which, in the sense in 
which we use the term, is not intellectual but practical. 

In a corresponding way the work of the professional 



32 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

school differs from that of the liberal college. In the 
teaching of engineering, medicine, or law we are or may be 
beyond the realm of mere skill and within the realm of 
ideas and principles. But the selection and the relating 
of these ideas is dominated by an immediate practical 
interest which cuts them off from the intellectual point 
of view of the scholar. If an undergraduate should take 
away from his studies of chemistry, biology and psychology 
only those parts which have immediate practical appli- 
cation in the field of medicine, the college teachers would 
feel that they had failed to give to the boy the kind of 
instruction demanded of a college. It is not their purpose 
to furnish applied knowledge in this sense. They are not 
willing to cut up their sciences into segments and to allow 
the student to select those segments which may be of 
service in the practice of an art or of a profession. In one 
way or another the teacher feels a kinship with the scientist 
and the scholar which forbids him to submit to this domi- 
nation of his instruction by the demands of an immediate 
practical interest. Whatever it may mean, he intends to 
hold the intellectual point of view and to keep his students 
with him if he can. In response, then, to demands for 
technical and professional training our college teachers 
tell us that such training may be obtained in other schools; 
it is not to be had in a college of liberal culture. 

In the conflict with the forces within the college our 
teachers find themselves fighting essentially the same battle 
as against the foes without. In a hundred different ways 
the friends of the college, students, graduates, trustees and 
even colleagues, seem to them so to misunderstand its 
mission as to minimize or to falsify its intellectual ideals. 
The college is a good place for making friends; it gives 
excellent experience in getting on with men; it has excep- 
tional advantages as an athletic club; it is a relatively safe 
place for a boy when he first leaves home; on the whole 
it may improve a student's manners; it gives acquaintance 
with lofty ideals of character, preaches the doctrine of 



WHAT THE LIBERAL COLLEGE IS 33 

social service, exalts the virtues and duties of citizenship. 
All these conceptions seem to the teacher to hide or to 
obscure the fact that the college is fundamentally a place 
of the mind, a time for thinking, an opportunity for know- 
ing. And perhaps in proportion to their own loftiness 
of purpose and motive they are the more dangerous as 
tending all the more powerfully to replace or to nullify 
the underlying principle upon which they all depend, 
Here again when misconception clears away, one can have 
no doubt that the battle of the teacher is a righteous one. 
It is well that a boy should have four good years of athletic 
sport, playing his own games and watching the games of 
his fellows; it is well that his manners should be improved; 
it is worth while to make good friends; it is very desirable 
to develop the power of understanding and working with 
other men; it is surely good to grow in strength and purity 
of character, in devotion to the interests of society, in 
readiness to meet the obligations and opportunities of 
citizenship. If any one of these be lacking from the fruits 
of a college course we may well complain of the harvest. 
And yet is it not true that by sheer pressure of these, by 
the driving and pulling of the social forces within and 
without the college, the mind of the student is constantly 
torn from its chief concern ? Do not our social and practical 
interests distract our boys from the intellectual achieve- 
ments which should dominate their imagination and com- 
mand their zeal? I believe that one may take it as the 
deliberate judgment of the teachers of our colleges to-day 
that the function of the college is constantly misunderstood, 
and that it is subjected to demands which, however friendly 
in intent, are yet destructive of its intellectual efficiency 
and success. 

in 

But now that the contention of the teacher has been 
stated and reaffirmed against objections, it is time to ask, 
What does it mean? And how can it be justified? By 



34 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

what right does a company of scholars invite young men 
to spend with them four years of discipleship? Do they, 
in their insistence upon the intellectual quality of their 
ideal intend to give an education which is avowedly un- 
practical? If so, how shall they justify their invitation, 
which may perhaps divert young men from other interests 
and other companionships which are valuable to them- 
selves and to their fellows? In a word, what is the under- 
lying motive of the teacher, what is there in the intellectual 
interests and activities which seems to him to warrant their 
domination over the training and instruction of young men 
during the college years ? 

It is no fair answer to this question to summon us to 
faith in intellectual ideals, to demand of us that we live 
the life of the mind with confidence in the virtues of in- 
telligence, that we love knowledge and because of our pas- 
sion follow after it. Most of us are already eager to accept 
intellectual ideals, but our very devotion to them forbids 
that we accept them blindly. I have often been struck 
by the inner contradictoriness of the demand that we have 
faith in intelligence. It seems to mean, as it is so commonly 
made to mean, that we must unintelligently follow intelli- 
gence, that we must ignorantly pursue knowledge, that we 
must question everything except the business of asking 
questions, that we think about everything except the use 
of thinking itself. As Mr. F. H. Bradley would say, the 
dictum, "Have faith in intelligence" is so true that it con- 
stantly threatens to become false. Our very conviction 
of its truth compels us to scrutinize and test it to the end. 

How then shall we justify the faith of the teacher? What 
reason can we give for our exaltation of intellectual training 
and activity? To this question two answers are possible. 
First, knowledge and thinking are good in themselves. 
Secondly, they help us in the attainment of other values 
in life which without them would be impossible. Both 
these answers may be given and are given by college teachers. 
Within them must be found whatever can be said by way 



WHAT THE LIBERAL COLLEGE IS 35 

of explanation and justification of the work of the liberal 
college. 

The first answer receives just now far less of recognition 
than it can rightly claim. When the man of the world 
is told that a boy is to be trained in thinking just because 
of the joys and satisfactions of thinking itself, just in order 
that he may go on thinking as long as he lives, the man of 
the world has been heard to scoff and to ridicule the idle 
dreaming of scholarly men. But if thinking is not a good 
thing in itself, if intellectual activity is not worth while 
for its own sake, will the man of the world tell us what is? 
There are those among us who find so much satisfaction 
in the countless trivial and vulgar amusements of a crude 
people that they have no time for the joys of the mind. 
There are those who are so closely shut up within a little 
round of petty pleasures that they have never dreamed of 
the fun of reading and conversing and investigating and 
reflecting. And of these one can only say that the differ- 
ence is one of taste, and that their tastes seem to be rela- 
tively dull and stupid. Surely it is one function of the 
liberal college to save boys from that stupidity, to give 
them an appetite for the pleasures of thinking, to make 
them sensitive to the joys of appreciation and understand- 
ing, to show them how sweet and captivating and whole- 
some are the games of the mind. At the time when the 
play element is still dominant it is worth while to acquaint 
boys with the sport of facing and solving problems. Apart 
from some of the experiences of friendship and sympathy 
I doubt if there are any human interests so permanently 
satisfying, so fine and splendid in themselves as are those 
of intellectual activity. To give our boys that zest, that 
delight in things intellectual, to give them an appreciation 
of a kind of life which is well worth living, to make them 
men of intellectual culture — that certainly is one part of 
the work of any liberal college. 

On the other hand, the creation of culture as so defined 
can never constitute the full achievement of the college. 



36 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

It is essential to awaken the impulses of inquiry, of experi- 
ment, of investigation, of reflection, the instinctive cravings 
of the mind. But no liberal college can be content with 
this. The impulse to thinking must be questioned and 
rationalized as must every other instinctive response. It 
is well to think, but what shall we think about? Are there 
any lines of investigation and reflection more valuable 
than others, and if so, how is their value to be tested? 
Or again, if the impulse for thinking comes into conflict with 
other desires and cravings, how is the opposition to be 
solved? It has sometimes been suggested that our man 
of intellectual culture may be found like Nero fiddling with 
words while all the world about him is aflame. And the 
point of the suggestion is not that fiddling is a bad and 
worthless pastime, but rather that it is inopportune on 
such an occasion, that the man who does it is out of touch 
with his situation, that his fiddling does not fit his facts. 
In a word, men know with regard to thinking, as with 
regard to every other content of human experience, that it 
cannot be valued merely in terms of itself. It must be 
measured in terms of its relation to other contents and to 
human experience as a whole. Thinking is good in itself, 
— but what does it cost of other things, what does it bring 
of other values? Place it amid all the varied contents of 
our individual and social experience, measure it in terms 
of what it implies, fix it by means of its relations, and then 
you will know its worth not simply in itself but in that 
deeper sense which comes when human desires are rational- 
ized and human lives are known in their entirety, as well 
as they can be known by those who are engaged in living 
them. 

In this consideration we find the second answer of the 
teacher to the demand for justification of the work of the 
college. Knowledge is good, he tells us, not only in itself, 
but in its enrichment and enhancement of the other values 
of our experience. In the deepest and fullest sense of the 
words, knowledge pays. This statement rests upon the 



WHAT THE LIBERAL COLLEGE IS 37 

classification of human actions into two groups, those of 
the instinctive type and those of the intellectual type. By 
far the greater part of our human acts are carried on without 
any clear idea of what we are going to do or how we are 
going to do it. For the most part our responses to our 
situations are the immediate responses of feeling, of per- 
ception, of custom, of tradition. But slowly and painfully, 
as the mind has developed, action after action has been 
translated from the feeling to the ideational type; in wider 
and wider fields men have become aware of their own 
modes of action, more and more they have come to under- 
standing, to knowledge of themselves and of their needs. 
And the principle underlying all our educational procedure 
is that on the whole, actions become more successful as 
they pass from the sphere of feeling to that of understanding. 
Our educational belief is that in the long run if men know 
what they are going to do and how they are going to do it, 
and what is the nature of the situation with which they are 
dealing, their response to that situation will be better 
adjusted and more beneficial than are the responses of the 
feeling type in like situations. 

It is all too obvious that there are limits to the validity 
of this principle. If men are to investigate, to consider, to 
decide, then action must be delayed and we must pay the 
penalty of waiting. If men are to endeavor to understand 
and know their situations, then we must be prepared to see 
them make mistakes in their thinking, lose their certainty 
of touch, wander off" into pitfalls and illusions and fallacies 
of thought, and in consequence secure for the time results 
far lower in value than those of the instinctive response 
which they seek to replace. The delays and mistakes and 
uncertainties of our thinking are a heavy price to pay, 
but it is the conviction of the teacher that the price is as 
nothing when compared with the goods which it buys. 
You may point out to him the loss when old methods of 
procedure give way before the criticism of understanding, 
you may remind him of the pain and suffering when old 



38 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

habits of thought and action are replaced, you may reprove 
him for all the blunders of the past; but in spite of it all 
he knows and you know that in human lives taken separately 
and in human life as a whole men's greatest lack is the lack 
of understanding, their greatest hope to know themselves 
and the world in which they live. 

Within the limits of this general educational principle 
the place of the liberal college may easily be fixed. In 
the technical school pupils are prepared for a specific work 
and are kept for the most part on the plane of perceptual 
action, doing work which others understand. In the pro- 
fessional school, students are properly within the realm of 
ideas and principles, but they are still limited to a specific 
human interest with which alone their understanding 
is concerned. But the college is called liberal as against 
both of these because the instruction is dominated by no 
special interest, is limited to no single human task, but is 
intended to take human activity as a whole, to understand 
human endeavors not in their isolation but in their relations 
to one another and to the total experience which we call 
the life of our people. And just as we believe that the 
building of ships has become more successful as men have 
come to a knowledge of the principles involved in their 
construction; just as the practice of medicine has become 
more successful as we have come to a knowledge of the 
human body, of the conditions within it and the influences 
without; — just so the teacher in the liberal college believes 
that life as a total enterprise, life as it presents itself to each 
one of us in his career as an individual, — human living, — 
will be more successful in so far as men come to understand 
it and to know it as they attempt to carry it on. To give 
boys an intellectual grasp on human experience — this, it 
seems to me, is the teacher's conception of the chief function 
of the liberal college. 

May I call attention to the fact that this second answer 
of the teacher defines the aim of the college as avowedly 
and frankly practical? Knowledge is to be sought chiefly 



WHAT THE LIBERAL COLLEGE IS 39 

for the sake of its contribution to the other activities of 
human living. But on the other hand, it is as definitely 
declared that in method the college is fully and unre- 
servedly intellectual. If we can see that these two demands 
are not in conflict but that they stand together in the 
harmonious relation of means and ends, of instrument and 
achievement, of method and result, we may escape many 
a needless conflict and keep our educational policy in single- 
ness of aim and action. To do this we must show that the 
college is intellectual, not as opposed to practical interests 
and purposes, but as opposed to unpractical and unwise 
methods of work. The issue is not between practical and 
intellectual aims but between the immediate and the 
remote aim, between the hasty and the measured procedure, 
between the demand for results at once and the willingness 
to wait for the best results. The intellectual road to suc- 
cess is longer and more roundabout than any other, but 
they who are strong and willing for the climbing are brought 
to higher levels of achievement than they could possibly 
have attained had they gone straight forward in the path- 
way of quick returns. If this were not true the liberal 
college would have no proper place in our life at all. In 
so far as it is true the college has a right to claim the best 
of our young men to give them its preparation for the 
living they are to do. 

IV 

But now that we have attempted to interpret the in- 
tellectual mission of the college, it may be fair to ask, 
"Are the teachers and scholars of our day always faithful 
to that mission? Do their statements and their practice 
always ring in accord with the principle which has been 
stated?" It seems to me that at two points they are 
constantly off the key, constantly at variance with the 
reasons by which alone their teaching can be justified. 

In the first place, it often appears as if our teachers and 
scholars were deliberately in league to mystify and befog 



4 o THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

the popular mind regarding this practical value of intel- 
lectual work. They seem not to wish too much said about 
the results and benefits. Their desire is to keep aloft the 
intellectual banner, to proclaim the intellectual gospel, 
to demand of student and public alike adherence to the 
faith. And in general when they are questioned as to 
results they give little satisfaction except to those who are 
already pledged to unwavering confidence in their ipse 
dixits. And largely as a result of this attitude the American 
people seem to me to have little understanding of the 
intellectual work of the college. Our citizens and patrons 
can see the value of games and physical exercises; they 
readily perceive the importance of the social give and 
take of a college democracy; they can appreciate the 
value of studies which prepare a young man for his pro- 
fession and so anticipate or replace the professional school; 
they can even believe that if a boy is kept at some sort of 
thinking for four years his mind may become more acute, 
more systematic, more accurate, and hence more useful 
than it was before. But as for the content of a college 
course, as for the value of knowledge, what a boy gains by 
knowing Greek or economics, philosophy or literature, 
history or biology, except as they are regarded as having 
professional usefulness, I think our friends are in the dark 
and are likely to remain so until we turn on the light. 
When our teachers say, as they sometimes do say, that 
the effect of knowledge upon the character and life of the 
student must always be for the college an accident, a cir- 
cumstance which has no essential connection with its real 
aim or function, then it seems to me that our educational 
policy is wholly out of joint. If there be no essential con- 
nection between instruction and life, then there is no reason 
for giving instruction except in so far as it is pleasant in 
itself, and we have no educational policy at all. As against 
this hesitancy, this absence of a conviction, we men of the 
college should declare in clear and unmistakable terms our 
creed — the creed that knowledge is justified by its results. 



WHAT THE LIBERAL COLLEGE IS 41 

We should say to our people so plainly that they cannot 
misunderstand, "Give us your boys, give us the means we 
need, and we will so train and inform the minds of those 
boys that their own lives and the lives of the men about 
them shall be more successful than they could be without 
our training. Give us our chance and we will show your 
boys what human living is, for we are convinced that they 
can live better in knowledge than they can in ignorance." 

There is a second wandering from the faith which is so 
common among investigators that it may fairly be called 
the "fallacy of the scholar." It is the belief that all knowl- 
edge is so good that all parts of knowledge are equally good. 
Ask many of our scholars and teachers what subjects a 
boy should study in order that he may gain insight for 
human living, and they will say, "It makes no difference 
in what department of knowledge he studies; let him go 
into Sanskrit or bacteriology, into mathematics or history; 
if only he goes where men are actually dealing with in- 
tellectual problems, and if only he learns how to deal with 
problems himself, the aim of education is achieved, he has 
entered into intellectual activity." This point of view, 
running through all the varieties of the elective system, 
seems to me hopelessly at variance with any sound edu- 
cational doctrine. It represents the scholar of the day 
at his worst both as a thinker and as a teacher. In so far 
as it dominates a group of college teachers it seems to me 
to render them unfit to determine and to administer a 
college curriculum. It is an announcement that they have 
no guiding principles in their educational practice, no 
principles of selection in their arrangement of studies, no 
genuine grasp on the relationship between knowledge and 
life. It is the concerted statement of a group of men each 
of whom is lost within the limits of his own special studies, 
and who as a group seem not to realize the organic relation- 
ships between them nor the common task which should 
bind them together. 

In bringing this second criticism against our scholars I 



42 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

am not urging that the principle of election of college studies 
should be entirely discontinued. But I should like to 
inquire by what right and within what limits it is justified. 
The most familiar argument in its favor is that if a student 
is allowed to choose along the lines of his own intellectual 
or professional interest he will have enthusiasm, the eager- 
ness which comes with the following of one's own bent. 
Now just so far as this result is achieved, just so far as the 
quality of scholarship is improved, the procedure is good and 
we may follow it if we do not thereby lose other results 
more valuable than our gain. But if the special interest 
comes into conflict with more fundamental ones, if what 
the student prefers is opposed to what he ought to prefer, 
then we of the college cannot leave the choice with him. 
We must say to him frankly, "If you do not care for liberal 
training you had better go elsewhere; we have a special 
and definite task assigned us which demands that we keep 
free from the domination of special or professional pursuits. 
So long as we are faithful to that task we cannot give you 
what you ask. " 

In my opinion, however, the fundamental motive of 
the elective system is not the one which has been mentioned. 
In the last resort our teachers allow students to choose 
their own studies not in order to appeal to intellectual or 
to professional interest, but because they themselves have 
no choice of their own in which they believe with sufficient 
intensity to impose it upon their pupils. And this lack 
of a dominating educational policy is in turn an expression 
of an intellectual attitude, a point of view, which marks 
the scholars of our time. In a word, it seems to me that 
our willingness to allow students to wander about in the 
college curriculum is one of the most characteristic expres- 
sions of a certain intellectual agnosticism, a kind of intel- 
lectual bankruptcy, into which, in spite of all our wealth 
of information, the spirit of the time has fallen. Let me 
explain my meaning. 

The old classical curriculum was founded by men who had 



WHAT THE LIBERAL COLLEGE IS 43 

a theory of the world and of human life. They had taken 
all the available content of human knowledge and had 
wrought it together into a coherent whole. What they 
knew was, as judged by our standards, very little in amount. 
But upon that little content they had expended all the 
infinite pains of understanding and interpretation. They 
had taken the separate judgments of science, philosophy, 
history and the arts, and had so welded them together, 
so established their relationships with one another, so freed 
them from contradictions and ambiguities that, so far as 
might be in their day and generation, human life as a whole 
and the world about us were known, were understood, 
were rationalized. They had a knowledge of human 
experience by which they could live and which they could 
teach to others engaged in the activities of living. 

But with the invention of methods of scientific investi- 
gation and discovery there came pouring into the mind of 
Europe great masses of intellectual material, — astronomy, 
physics, chemistry. This content for a time it could not 
understand, could not relate to what it already knew. 
The old boundary lines did not enclose the new fields, the 
old explanations and interpretations would not fit the new 
facts. Knowledge had not grown, it had simply been 
enlarged, and the two masses of content, the old and the 
new, stood facing each other with no common ground of 
understanding. Here was the intellectual task of the great 
leaders of the early modern thought of Europe: to re- 
establish the unity of knowledge, to discover the relation- 
ships between these apparently hostile bodies of judgments, 
to know the world again, but with all the added richness 
of the new insights and the new information. This was the 
work of Leibnitz and Spinoza, of Kant and Hegel, and 
those who labored with them. And in a very considerable 
measure the task had been accomplished, order had been 
restored. But again with the inrush of the newer dis- 
coveries, first in the field of biology and then later in the 
world of human relationships, the difficulties have returned, 



44 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

multiplied a thousand fold. Every day sees a new field 
of facts opened up, a new method of investigation invented, 
a new department of knowledge established. And in the 
rush of it all these new sciences come merely as additions, 
not to be understood but simply numbered, not to be 
interpreted but simply listed in the great collection of 
separate fields of knowledge. If you will examine the work 
of any scientist within one of these fields you will find him 
ordering, systematizing, reducing to principles, in a word, 
knowing every fact in terms of its relation to every other 
fact and to the whole field within which it falls. But at 
the same time these separate sciences, these separate groups 
of judgment, are left standing side by side with no intel- 
ligible connections, no establishment of relationships, no 
interpretation in the sense in which we insist upon it within 
each of the fields taken by itself. Is it not the character- 
istic statement of a scholar of our time to say, "I do not 
know what may be the ultimate significance of these facts 
and these principles; all that I know is that if you will 
follow my methods within my field you will find the facts 
coming into order, the principles coming into simple and 
coherent arrangement. With any problems apart from this 
order and this arrangement I have intellectually no con- 
cern." 

It has become an axiom with us that the genuine student 
labors within his own field. And if the student ventures 
forth to examine the relations of his field to the surrounding 
country he very easily becomes a populariser, a litterateur, 
a speculator, and worst of all, unscientific. Now I do not 
object to a man's minding his own intellectual business if 
he chooses to do so, but when a man minds his own business 
because he does not know any other business, because he 
has no knowledge whatever of the relationships which 
justify his business and make it worth while, then I think 
one may say that though such a man minds his own affairs 
he does not know them, he does not understand them. 
Such a man, from the point of view of the demands of a 



WHAT THE LIBERAL COLLEGE IS 45 

liberal education, differs in no essential respect from the 
tradesman who does not understand his trade or the pro- 
fessional man who merely practices his profession. Just 
as truly as they, he is shut up within a special interest; 
just as truly as they he is making no intellectual attempt 
to understand his experience in its unity. And the pity 
of it is that more and more the chairs in our colleges are 
occupied by men who have only this special interest, this 
specialized information, and it is through them that we 
attempt to give our boys a liberal education, which the 
teachers themselves have not achieved. 

I should not like to be misunderstood in making this 
railing accusation against our teachers and our time. If 
I say that our knowledge is at present a collection of scat- 
tered observations about the world rather than an under- 
standing of it, fairness compels the admission that the failure 
is due to the inherent difficulties of the situation and to the 
novelty of the problems presented. If I cry out against 
the agnosticism of our people it is not as one who has escaped 
from it, nor as one who would point the way back to the 
older synthesis, but simply as one who believes that the 
time has come for a reconstruction, for a new synthesis. 
We have had time enough now to get some notion of our 
bearings, shocks enough to get over our nervousness and 
discomfiture when a new one comes along. It is the op- 
portunity and the obligation of this generation to think 
through the content of our knowing once again, to under- 
stand it, so far as we can. And in such a battle as this, 
surely it is the part of the college to take the lead. Here 
is the mission of the college teacher as of no other member 
of our common life. Surely he should stand before his 
pupils and before all of us as a man who has achieved some 
understanding of this human situation of ours, but more 
than that, as one who is eager for the conflict with the 
powers of darkness and who can lead his pupils in enthusi- 
astic devotion to the common cause of enlightment. 



46 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 



And now, finally, after these attacks upon the policies 
which other men have derived from their love of knowl- 
edge, may I suggest two matters of policy which seem to me 
to follow from the definition of education which we have 
taken? The first concerns the content of the college 
course; the second has to do with the method of its presen- 
tation to the undergraduate. 

We have said that the system of free election is natural 
for those to whom knowledge is simply a number of separate 
departments. It is equally true that just in so far as 
knowledge attains unity, just so far as the relations of the 
various departments are perceived, freedom of election 
by the student must be limited. For it at once appears 
that on the one side there are vast ranges of information 
which have virtually no significance for the purposes of a 
liberal education, while on the other hand there are certain 
elements so fundamental and vital that without any one 
of them a liberal education is impossible. 

I should like to indicate certain parts of human knowledge 
which seems to me so essential that no principle of election 
should ever be allowed to drive them out of the course of 
any college student. 

First, a student should become acquainted with the 
fundamental motives and purposes and beliefs which, 
clearly or unclearly recognized, underlie all human experi- 
ence and bind it together. He must perceive the moral 
strivings, the intellectual endeavors, the aesthetic experi- 
ences of his race, and closely linked with these, determining 
and determined by them, the beliefs about the world which 
have appeared in our systems of religion. To investigate 
this field, to bring it to such clearness of formulation as may 
be possible, is the task of philosophy — an essential element 
in any liberal education. Secondly, as in human living, 
our motives, purposes and beliefs have found expression in 
institutions, — those concerted modes of procedure by 



WHAT THE LIBERAL COLLEGE IS 47 

which we work together, — a student should be made 
acquainted with these. He should see and appreciate 
what is intended, what accomplished, and what left undone 
by such institutions as property, the courts, the family, 
the church, the mill. To know these as contributing and 
failing to contribute to human welfare is the work of our 
social or humanistic sciences, into which a boy must go on 
his way through the liberal college. Thirdly, in order to 
understand the motives and the institutions of human life 
one must know the conditions which surround it, the stage 
on which the game is played. To give this information is 
the business of astronomy, geology, physics, chemistry, 
biology and the other sciences of nature. These a boy 
must know, so far as they are significant and relevant to his 
purpose. Fourthly, as all three of these factors, the mo- 
tives, the institutions, the natural processes have sprung 
from the past and have come to be what they are by change 
upon change in the process of time, the student of human 
life must try to learn the sequence of events from which the 
present has come. The development of human thought 
and attitude, the development of human institutions, the 
development of the world and of the beings about us — 
all these must be known, as throwing light upon present 
problems, present instrumentalities, present opportunities 
in the life of human endeavor. And in addition to these 
four studies which render human "experience in terms of 
abstract ideas, a liberal education must take account of 
those concrete representations of life which are given in 
the arts, and especially in the art of literature. It is well 
that a boy should be acquainted with his world not simply 
as expressed by the principles of knowledge but also as 
depicted by the artist with all the vividness and definiteness 
which are possible in the portrayal of individual beings 
in individual relationships. These five elements, then, a 
young man must take from a college of liberal training, the 
contributions of philosophy, of humanistic science, of natural 
science, of history, and of literature. So far as knowledge 



48 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

is concerned, these at least he should have, welded together 
in some kind of interpretation of his own experience and 
of the world in which he lives. 

My second suggestion is that our college curriculum 
should be so arranged and our instruction so devised that 
its vital connection with the living of men should be obvious 
even to an undergraduate. A little while ago I heard one 
of the most prominent citizens of this country speaking 
of his college days, and he said, "I remember so vividly 
those few occasions on which the professor would put 
aside the books and talk like a real man about real things." 
Oh, the bitterness of those words to the teacher! Our 
books are not dealing with the real things, and for the most 
part we are not real men either, but just old fogies and 
bookworms! And to be perfectly frank_about the whole 
matter, I believe that in large measure our pupils are in- 
different to their studies simply because they do not see 
that these are important. 

But if we really have a vital course of study to present 
this difficulty can in large measure be overcome. It 
is possible to make a Freshman realize the need of trans- 
lating his experience from the forms of feeling to those 
of ideas. He can and he ought to be shown that now, 
his days of mere tutelage being over, it is time for him 
to face the problems of his people, to begin to think 
about those problems for himself, to learn what other men 
have learned and thought before him, in a word, to get 
himself ready to take his place among those who are re- 
sponsible for the guidance of our common life by ideas and 
principles and purposes. If this could be done, I think 
we should get from the reality-loving American boy some- 
thing like an intellectual enthusiasm, something of the 
spirit that comes when he plays a game that seems to him 
really worth playing. But I do not believe that this result 
can be achieved without a radical reversal of the arrange- 
ment of the college curriculum. I should like to see every 
freshman at once plunged into the problems of philosophy, 



WHAT THE LIBERAL COLLEGE IS 49 

into the difficulties and perplexities about our institutions, 
into the scientific accounts of the world especially as they 
bear on human life, into the portrayals of human experience 
which are given by the masters of literature. If this were 
done by proper teaching, it seems to me the boy's college 
course would at once take on significance for him; he would 
understand what he is about; and though he would be a 
sadly puzzled boy at the end of the first year, he would 
still have before him three good years of study, of investi- 
gation, of reflection, and of discipleship, in which to achieve, 
so far as may be, the task to which he has been set. Let 
him once feel the problems of the present, and his historical 
studies will become significant; let him know what other 
men have discovered and thought about his problems, 
and he will be ready to deal with them himself. But in 
any case, the whole college course will be unified and domi- 
nated by a single interest, a single purpose, — that of so 
, understanding human life as to be ready and equipped for 
the practice of it. And this would mean for the college, 
not another seeking of the way of quick returns, but rather 
an escape from aimless wanderings in the mere by-paths 
of knowledge, a resolute climbing on the high road to a 
unified grasp upon human experience. 



VI 

I have taken so much of your time this morning that an 
apology seems due for the things I have omitted to mention. 
I have said nothing of the organization of the college, 
nothing of the social life of the students, nothing of the 
relations with the alumni, nothing of the needs and quali- 
fications of the teachers, and even within the consideration 
of the course of study, nothing of the value of specialization 
or of the disciplinary subjects or of the training in language 
and expression. And I have put these aside deliberately, 
for the sake of a cause which is greater than any of them — 
a cause which lies at the very heart of the liberal college. 



50 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

It is the cause of making clear to the American people the 
mission of the teacher, of convincing them of the value of 
knowledge: not the specialized knowledge which contributes 
to immediate practical aims, but the unified understanding 
which is Insight. 



Ill 

WHAT DOES THE COLLEGE PREPARE FOR 

COLLEGE education, like all other genuine education, 
is of course practical. It is preparation. Its under- 
lying principle is very simple. Young people are to be 
called upon later to carry on certain activities. The purpose 
of the preparation is to bring it about that those activities 
will be better done than they would have been if the prepa- 
ration had not been given. If in any case it can be shown 
that a student is not thus made ready for better doing, if it 
appears that the graduates of a school are not more suc- 
cessful than they would have been had they not attended 
the school, then study and school are alike condemned and 
should be discarded. School and college are both to be 
judged by practical standards. 

But what are the activities in which students may be 
expected to engage, for which they should be prepared? 
In relation to the goods, the possessions of life they fall 
into three groups. If our education prepares properly 
for each of these then it is socially justified. 

The classification suggested above is obvious enough. 
First, men are making goods, making things which they 
want. Second, they are distributing these goods, are 
assigning to each man his share of them. And third, they 
are using goods, each man the share which falls to his lot. 

For example, men take the forces, the stuff of the material 
world and of human nature, and by processes of cultivation 
and of manufacture, make out of these books, trees, fruits, 
sermons, songs, boats, shoes, railways, tennis racquets — 
all the multitudinous things which taken together become 
the common stock of human possessions. Again, men build 

51 



52 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

up ways of distributing these possessions, of determining 
to whom each bit of value shall go to be kept as his own. 
Thus we have the customs of rent and wages and property 
and courts and inheritance and taxes and all the rest of our 
machinery of social justice. And finally each man in his 
own way uses what he has for such purposes as he thinks 
best. He reads books, or puts them up for decoration; 
he listens to sermons, sails a boat, travels in a train, swings 
a tennis racquet, lies under the shade of a tree, sips the 
juice of a fruit, in general makes of what he has what he 
wants in the way of experience. 

Now it is these three sets of activities for which our 
schools and colleges are making young people ready. We 
want manufacturing and growing better done; we want 
distributing better done; we want using better done. If 
these ends be accomplished then our teaching plays its 
proper part in social and individual living; if not, it fails 
to play its part. 

As a teacher surveys these three sets of activities with 
which his work is concerned, two observations will readily 
occur to him — two judgments of comparison. He may 
ask first as to the relative importance of the three tasks 
assigned, and second, as to their relative difficulty. In 
both cases he will find, I think, an ascending scale running 
from manufacture, through distribution, to use, an ascend- 
ing scale of importance and of difficulty. 

The comparison as to importance is rather hard to put 
into a form which will stand the test of criticism. To ask 
whether the making or distributing or the using of wealth 
is the most important is dangerously like inquiring whether 
chickens precede eggs, or eggs chickens. Obviously enough, 
all three activities are essential. There is not much to be 
gained by making things if they are not to be given to any 
one, nor much gained by giving them if they are not used. 
But they cannot be used unless they are given, nor can they 
be given unless they are made. To distinguish relative 
values in this realm seems like comparing white and black 



WHAT DOES THE COLLEGE PREPARE FOR 53 

crows in the dark. And yet there is a certain sense in which 
the using of value is more fundamental than either making 
or distributing it. In a very real sense, using is human 
life itself, it is the human experience for the sake of which 
the other activities are carried on. To use what we have 
is the very process of living; to that end all other acts 
are merely contributory; they are its instruments and 
machinery. 

The differences as to difficulty are much more readily 
perceived. Relatively manufacture, the production of 
goods, is an easy task for men. It is easy in the sense that 
we master it with ease. This does not mean that we are 
not called by it to strenuous endeavors. It does mean that 
our endeavors are successful. What we do in this field 
pays quickly and surely in terms of results. The last cen- 
tury has seen such a developing control of the processes 
of manufacture and growth that our wealth has increased 
by leaps and bounds. The technical processes which have 
been devised by the application of natural science to the 
accomplishment of human purposes have so enlarged our 
productive power that as compared with our fathers and 
grandfathers we roll in wealth and in the assurance of 
greater wealth in the future. Relatively speaking, we have 
the processes of the production of wealth in hand. 

In the distribution of wealth we are not so successful. 
The world is torn with conflicting theories as to how this 
should be done. Men are quarreling as to the possession 
of goods. Nations quarrel with nations, individuals with 
individuals, and we do not easily find a basis for the settle- 
ment of these quarrels. 

In a country driven mad by injustice and tyranny, men 
have escaped from their bonds and are wildly seeking to 
formulate and to put into action principles of distribution 
subversive of all that men in other countries have counted 
secure and essential. In safer countries where the pressure 
is not so severe, men are in dread lest it may become so 
and are forming into parties which view each other with 



54 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

hostile eye and with stealthy suspicion. Here we find the 
men who believe that whatever has been is right. They 
hold to the view that to their grandfathers a scheme of 
social justice was revealed by splendid intuition and that 
he who would depart from this is a traitor and a thief. 
To such men the cries of the madmen in the country which 
has found release are so dreadful that they must stop their 
ears, nay, must stop the ears of their fellow-countrymen 
as well. These two groups are the extremists with respect 
to social justice — the men who would break our present 
scheme to pieces and start anew and those who hold that 
scheme so sacred that the suggestion of changing it is not 
simply false but also vicious and sacrilegious. Between 
these two are most of us, men who try to have patience and 
common sense, but who are sadly puzzled and perplexed 
just now. One thing we know, namely, that the way is not 
clear, old procedures are not surely right, old answers 
cannot be accepted without question. The world is seek- 
ing wisdom as to social justice in distribution, and that 
wisdom is hard to get. 

But more difficult yet than the distributing of values is 
the human task of using them. And the most serious as- 
pect of the difficulty is that we do not feel it. We may be 
baffled by the problems of social justice but at least we are 
interested in them. In a college community as well as in a 
public forum men can be stirred to eager and desperate 
activity by the perception that other men are not being fairly 
treated, that human beings are being robbed of a fair chance 
at the opportunities of living. We may not know what 
to do but our impulse is generous and our will resolute to 
do something, if only the mind would tell us what it is. 
But in the realm of use, in apprehension of the necessity 
of taste and insight and appreciation of value, we are hardly 
conscious of difficulty at all. We have a certain blind 
faith that if only the opportunities of life are given they 
will be taken and human lives will be in general what they 
ought to be. Nothing could be more obvious than the 



WHAT DOES THE COLLEGE PREPARE FOR 55 

falseness of such a faith as this. Wealth has not very 
generally brought to those who have it the fineness of taste 
and the niceness of discrimination which the use of it de- 
mands. Quite as often it has brought coarseness of feeling 
and dullness of appreciation. Our civilization does not 
very clearly become more fine as it becomes more rich. 
We are in danger of having the world in our hands and 
losing it because our fingers slip. What shall we do with 
the world which is given us ? That is, I think, the hardest 
lesson which the teacher has to learn and teach. 

Here then, are the three tasks of the teacher. How 
do they bear upon the work of the liberal college? In a 
broad general way it is true that the teaching of the pro- 
duction of value rests with the technical and professional 
schools. They are engaged in devising ways of making 
goods. And again may we say that relatively speaking 
their task is an easy one. The liberal schools, on the 
other hand, are concerned with both the second and the 
third endeavors. They are expected to inform our people 
as to how the goods of life should be shared and how they 
should be used. These are the two fundamental aims of 
liberal teaching. 

In the remainder of this paper I should like to press upon 
the college the claims of the third of these tasks as against 
a constant over-emphasis of the second. And may I pro- 
test that this is not because one loves the second less but 
rather because one loves the third more. It would perhaps 
be truer to say that the second without the third is nothing 
and that therefore love for it demands that we leave it no 
longer bereft of its fellow. If only we can show that the 
notion of social justice is not a complete account of life, 
that it needs the supplementation of this third conception, 
then perhaps in homes and churches and schools and col- 
leges we may get a wiser and saner teaching of life than is 
now given. Let us then condemn and vilify the ideal of 
social justice in order to bring its adherents to their senses. 

The point at issue was brought to clear formulation in 



56 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

a public discussion in which the writer of this paper took 
part a few years ago. The first of two speakers said, "I 
would not give a snap of my finger for a scheme of education 
which does not find its final term of value in Service." 
To which the second speaker replied, "I would not give 
a snap of my finger for a scheme of education or of life 
which does find its final term of value in Service." Such 
statements as these have all the exaggeration of public 
controversy but carefully considered they define an issue 
which demands the attention of the liberal teacher. 

Strictly speaking it seems to me clear that the second of 
the above statements is right. Service, as such, is not a 
term of value at all. To give to another is valuable only 
in a secondary and derivative sense, never in a final one. 
It is the thing given which is of value. There is nothing 
gained by giving to another something which is not worth 
giving. To serve one's fellows is to give to them what 
they need, what they enjoy, what is worth while. And if 
one is in search of the final term by which all our activities 
and all our teaching are to be justified we must find it among 
those things the having of which is good and the lack of 
which robs human living of its value. To serve is to give 
something and service is good only in so far as that some- 
thing given is good. 

At the risk of seeming flippant and unfair I should like 
to press this point home by a number of statements which 
though they are only half-truths are yet needed because 
the other half is so constantly torn away from its fellow 
and kept before our students as if it were the total and the 
sufficient truth. 

Much of the teaching and preaching which our students 
hear is far too self-centered in its emphasis upon social 
justice and upon the duty of service. After all, the essential 
thing is not that we should make the world right, but that 
it should be right. One often feels that some of our youth- 
ful enthusiasts are haunted by the dreadful fear that there 
may be no sinners for them to save, no broken lives for them 



WHAT DOES THE COLLEGE PREPARE FOR 57 

to put together again. As against this one must protest 
that in the last analysis the receiving of value does as much 
for human living as does the giving of it. If for no other 
reason, this is true because after all no one can give unless 
there is some one who will take his gift. And if the taking 
be not good, then the giving, whose final justification lies 
within it, cannot be good either. Clearly enough, in the 
grand total of human experience, giving cannot have more 
value than the taking and using of the thing given. If it 
be not good to use then it is not good to give the thing 
used. 

And from another point of view, the determination to 
serve one's fellows needs to be kept clear in mind so that 
it may be successful. It is well enough for youthful en- 
thusiasts to go out with the determination to make a hun- 
dred men happy, to make a hundred lives worth while. 
But simple arithmetical calculation assures us that such 
expectations will not be realized. On the average one 
man cannot make more than one life worth while, for the 
obvious reason that somebody must have the life which is 
so practiced upon. If we base our calculation upon "wel- 
fares" as the term of measurement, and say that each man 
would like to make as many welfares as possible, the hard 
fact remains that on the average we cannot each make more 
than one of them. A welfare must belong to somebody 
and if there were actually created more welfares than men, 
the trouble would be that there would not be enough men 
to take them. There is no danger of course of such a 
calamity as this. Human life hardly furnishes us on the 
whole with half a welfare apiece. But there is danger 
that our young people misconstrue their task, state it to 
themselves in exaggerated sentimental terms and so doom 
themselves to the disappointment and sense of futility 
which come when idle dreams collapse. 

From still another point of view, one is here protesting 
against the externalism of our social teaching. We teach 
too much about the machinery of life and far too little 



58 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

about life itself. We tell too much about the things which 
may be done and too little about what they are done for. 
As a people we have immense admiration for a man who 
builds a great library and profound disdain for a man who 
sits down quietly in the library to read a book. What is 
he doing there, we ask. Of what use is the reading of the 
book? What will it enable him to do? And if one answers 
that he reads because reading a good book is a good human 
experience and that therefore it may be done not for the 
sake of something else but for its own sake, practical men 
think that we have gone mad. But again, let us protest 
that if reading is not good then the building of the library 
was not good, and our benefactor is not good and nothing 
has been accomplished by all that he has given and done. 
If there are not values in life then doing has no value and 
the builder and the dreamer go down together in a common 
crash. 

The same principle holds on other sides of our life. We 
admire men who can write books and men who can paint 
pictures. Such men seem to us to have succeeded — if 
someone else tells us that their work is highly regarded. 
But we as a people are robbing both writers and painters 
of their proper success because we do not give them readers 
and seers who can appreciate, who can take the meaning, 
the beauty which they give. It is true that we pay them 
money for their efforts, but it is also true that we say "Ah " 
in the wrong place, that we are thrilled by the vulgar and 
stupid thing and left cold by the beauty into which the 
spirit of the artist has poured itself. There is no surer 
way of killing artists and writers than to be stupid and 
dull in the presence of what they have created. For such 
murders a wealthy crass civilization has a heavy burden 
of guilt to bear. 

What then shall the liberal teacher teach as the represen- 
tation of the learning which seeks to know what life may 
be? Shall he forbid men to serve their fellows? We have 
not said that. To say that in colleges men preach service 



WHAT DOES THE COLLEGE PREPARE FOR 59 

badly is not to say that in human society we have too much 
generous friendship. We have far too little of it. By 
every means in our power we must build it up so that in 
the sharing of the goods of life men may act toward one 
another like friends and fellows rather than like competing 
beasts, each struggling for the plunder which strength and 
cunning will enable him to take from other men. College 
students, like other men, must learn how values should be 
shared and then must pledge themselves to see to it that 
justice is done, nay rather must be as eager that other 
men shall have the values which they crave as that the 
goods they wish should come to them. 

But still the point holds good that all such eagerness as 
this will come to little unless the man who gives and he 
who takes have taste for life. There is the final test of 
value. There is the point where all our strivings succeed 
or fail. 

Can college teachers teach that lesson? Perhaps they 
can if they have learned it. But they will find a hundred 
other teaching powers outside the college fighting against 
them. What shall they do? It seems to me that first 
they should remain apart from the machinery of life, re- 
fusing to be busy with it. And second they should with 
very steady eyes survey the goods which life affords, should 
try to see what life may be in terms of its experiences, 
should make a list of books, and trees, and songs, and 
friends, and games, and arguments, and all the other 
splendid things that men can use. And third they should be 
sensitive themselves, discerning what is fine and true and 
generous and permanent, and cutting it ofF with sharp, 
clear-cut avoidance from the vulgar, false, selfish and 
transitory things that cheapen life. And finally, having 
some taste and insight, they should teach them to their 
pupils, in whatever ways teaching may be done. 

There is no one in all our social scheme more ambitious 
than is the teacher. He is making the mind of his pupil 
so that it may be fitted to the world in which he lives. 



60 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

Knowledge and skill must be developed for the making 
of wealth; wisdom and fairness must be established for 
the distributing and sharing of wealth. But above all, and 
as the end of all, taste and sensitiveness and fineness and 
intensity of appreciation must be built up, so that our 
wealth may be worth giving and worth having. 






H 



IV 

MAKING THE MIND OF A NATION 

AS this nation a mind ? I fear not. A mind has unity 
or at least seeks to have it. Perhaps better, a mind 
is unity in action. A mind is an activity which gath- 
ers up disconnected opinions, impulses, theories and brings 
them into order. Ideas, if they are within the same mind, 
have relations to one another, are responsible each to the 
other. They may not live in isolation, nor even in little separ- 
ate clusters. The mind whose the]/ are, demands that they 
be one in spirit and in truth. This craving, this zest for 
unity is the very essence of a life of thought. Only so far 
as a man expresses it can he be said to live as an individual 
mind at all. Without it or with little expression of it he is 
a bundle of things, a group, a mass, a welter of conscious 
processes. With it he is a human spirit. Just so it is 
with the thinking of a nation. If there are within it many 
separate streams of impulse, of opinion, of prejudice, of 
information, of doubt, or of dogmatism; if these do not know 
each other; if they have not taken as a common hope 
the goal of mutual acquaintance and understanding, the 
nation has no mind. It is a group or many groups. Its 
life is incoherence and its fate is that which incoherence 
gives — the life of those who know not what they do nor 
see the way they go-. 

For many reasons we as a people are now failing to 
achieve intellectual unity. People from many separate 
and different races have been poured into our ranks. Our 
own national tradition of individualism has unfitted us for 
the breaking down of barriers. The splitting up of knowl- 
edge and of life into separate compartments, — sciences, 

61 



62 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

arts, trades, professions — this has sundered many of the 
connections of earlier days. We are not dull, and yet as 
a people we are not intelligent. Our minds are active, 
keen, spirited, determined, each in its special sphere. The 
separate things we do are done with skill and energy. And 
yet we, as a people, have not a mind. Our common life 
rises very little above the level of the mob, the crowd — 
which feels but does not think; which does not judge but 
follows changing impulse and caprice. Perhaps we are as 
yet too young to have a mind. Perhaps we grow too fast 
to keep ourselves in mind. 

But now whither shall we turn to seek the making of a 
mind: To whom shall we go for judging of our separate 
interests, for understanding of our follies, conserving our 
truths, cooling our passions, questioning our dogmas, 
criticising our thoughts. Where, in our social scheme, is 
judgment to be found? What is the nervous center of our 
lifer Where is the place of understanding: Is the place 
of judgment to be found in the newspaper? I fear that we 
do not so regard that institution. Do we not rather think 
of it as partisan, as special pleader, as used to represent a 
cause, rather than as judge or critic, assigning to every* case 
its proper value and significance? This common judg- 
ment upon editor and news collector may not be true, but yet 
we make it, and so long as it is made, the newspaper cannot 
be a center for our common thinking. Xor can the maga- 
zine or book perform the service. We do not use them in 
this way; we do not read enough of things worth reading 
to make a common understanding. Xor for another set 
of reasons can the home, the many homes, nor yet the 
church, the many separate, unrelated churches, furnish the 
thing we need. Xo one of these commands our thinking 
as a whole. And even less are our public men equipped 
for bringing our thinking under their control. More even 
than the newspaper, they too are talked about as advocates 
of parties, interests, sections, creeds, rather than as the 
guides whom we may trust to lead us. And when they 



MAKING THE MIND OF A NATION 63 

come before us discussing public policy, we are as often 
busy in peddling gossip behind their backs, in talking 
scandal and petty spite, as in listening to their words, 
discussing their thoughts, weighing their arguments, con- 
sidering the nation's policy. Perhaps they are at fault; 
perhaps their hearers; more likely they and we are both at 
fault. However that may be, they do not lead us in trying 
to understand a nation's life in fair and generous meeting 
of opinion; they do not master us in shaping a nation's 
mind, 

Where then shall we go to find the place of understanding, 
where plead that judgment may be given upon the issues 
of our common life? More than any other institution, it 
seems to me, the school and college must assume the task. 
And especially the liberal college must endeavor to become 
the place where mind is made and molded. The liberal 
college is a place where we are trying to gather up the 
elements of life, — moral, aesthetic, religious, political, in- 
dustrial, social, — are trying to bring these together so 
that men may understand them. Out of this stuff, this 
content of experience, the college tries to make a single 
thing, a meaning, a scheme of life, an interpretation of what 
men are and may become. Just that and nothing else 
is what the college of liberal arts intends to do. With that 
accomplished, it succeeds according to the measure of the 
accomplishment. With that neglected or not done, what- 
ever else it may achieve, no institution is a college. Call 
it whatever else you please, a school for boys, a country 
club, a factory for making tools for industry, an idler's 
paradise, a shop for grinding gerunds, a rag-bag store house 
for ill-assorted facts — these are not colleges. To be a 
place of understanding, to fashion minds \for men, to make 
a nation's mind, that is the aim that leads us on. 

Of course, to gaze at such a goal as this is dreaming; 
of course, one knows that such a vision will never be made 
true. But these are days for daring deeds that cannot be 
done. And colleges are always young enough in spirit to 



64 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

follow the roads that never corne to endings. The task 
cannot be done but still it must be done. To make a 
nation's mind, — to help in making it, perhaps to lead the 
way — that is the task for every one of us, trustee and 
teacher, graduate and undergraduate alike. This nation 
has so great a part to play that it must know its lines. And 
we must read the play, assign the parts and make them 
altogether into one. We must not be a mob, a crowd, 
our speech an incoherent clash and clatter of unrelated 
groans, and shouts and yells. This nation, like an in- 
dividual mind, must seek to understand itself, to feel, to 
will, to appreciate the part it has to play, must play its 
part with understanding. And we within that part must 
try to make our lines stand out vivid and clear, This 
nation needs a mind with which to play its part. The 
college must know the play and make the mind, the minds, 
which shall interpret and express it. 



PART II 
THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE PROCESS 

THE three papers which follow are given to a con- 
sideration of the friends and supporters of the 
college. Their relations to each other and their 
relations to the college are regarded with somewhat anxious 
eyes. 

The first paper was given at the meeting of the Phi Beta 
Kappa society of Harvard University, June 18, 1917. It 
takes the motto of the society, "Learning at the Helm 
of Life," as the governing ideal of the college. It sum- 
mons trustees, teachers, presidents, graduates, and under- 
graduates to give an account of their allegiance to that 
ideal. 

The second paper, "The Freedom of the College," ap- 
peared in the Atlantic Monthly of January, 191 8. It is 
concerned with the relationship between teaching and study 
on the one hand and freedom of thought and speech on the 
other. It finds freedom to be, both for college and for 
teacher, primarily not a privilege but a duty. 

The third paper was given at a meeting of the New Eng- 
land Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools, 
November 7, 191 4. It was one of a series of papers which 
discussed the values of various factors in the life of the 
college as a whole. This paper finds side by side with 
the studies of the classroom, the Student Activities of the 
community outside the classroom. It asks as to the proper 
relationship between activities and studies. 



65 



THE COLLEGE AS CRITIC 

I COME to-day to talk with you about colleges. I have 
not in mind Harvard, nor even Amherst — but just col- 
leges in the large, especially American colleges. We shall 
be concerned not with technical schools or professional schools 
or even with universities, but with plain, old-fashioned 
colleges of liberal culture. 

I feel justified in presenting this theme to-day because 
of the relationship between the society of Phi Beta Kappa 
and the liberal college. I suppose a member of the society 
may be defined as "a person who has been very successful 
in a liberal college." To know one of these two institutions 
is then to know the other. If we can know what a college 
is and so what success in a college is, we may be able to tell 
the members of Phi Beta Kappa just what they are. I am 
sure they would be interested to know. But if, on the 
other hand, they already know what they are and will tell 
us, we may reverse the procedure. If what they have done 
constitutes success in college life, and if they will tell us 
what they have done, we then, knowing what success in 
college is, may learn what a college intends to be and do. 
That surely we should be interested to know. 

As between these two procedures, courtesy would sug- 
gest that we assume that the members of this society do 
know what they are about. I propose, therefore, that we 
take the society and its principles for granted, and that 
from these as our starting-point we attempt to define the 
nature of the college, its aims, and its problems. 

What, then, is the society? Does it describe itself; 
does it set forth its purpose and ideal? It flies a pennant, 

66 



THE COLLEGE AS CRITIC 67 

as you all know well. Those letters of its name are not 
mere empty sounds. They mean a thought, <£iXocro<£ta 
fiiov Kvfief)vTJTr)<s, which is, being translated, "Learning 
at the helm of life." I love the figure which those words 
suggest: the bark of life adventuring out into the open sea, 
tossed by the waves which bear it up, driven by the winds, 
carried by the currents, swinging with the tides, but ever 
as it goes, with learning at the helm — learning which knows 
the waves and watches them, learning which spies upon 
the winds and turns the bark to use them, learning which 
measures the currents and the tides and plays the winds 
against them, learning which knows the port behind and 
sees the port before, learning which does not fetch or carry, 
which does not drive or batter, learning which sees and 
guides — learning, the pilot, at the helm of life! 

Yes, I think we know. The members of Phi Beta Kappa 
are the men who fly that pennant. They have not all been 
elected to the society, and perhaps some men have been 
voted in who have never looked aloft to see the pennant 
where it flies. But whether in or out, those are the men 
of whom we talk to-day. These men have taken learning 
as their guide. Let strength and custom bear them up 
and carry them on, let feeling drive them forth, let mood 
and circumstance divert their course, let yearnings sweep 
them here and there, but yet they try to see, to know, 
to understand, to tell whither they ought to go and how it 
shall be done. Learning at the helm of life! I greet the 
goodly fellowship of those who fly that flag. 

But now what is a college? Why, it is that in which to 
fly this flag is to succeed and to fly another, any other, is 
to fail. A college is a place, a group, a comradeship of 
those who follow learning as their guide and who welcome 
others in the same pursuit. A college is a spirit, a way of 
life, a manner of being; it is the will to see the way we go. 
And we who set our bounds by fence and yard, by brick and 
stone, credits and tests, books and degrees, what does the 
college think of us? These days of strife are days when 



68 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

men must tell what flag they fly, what leader they obey, 
what loyalty they own. I am inclined, therefore, as speaker 
for the society of those who follow learning, to demand of 
colleges that they present themselves and give account of 
iwhat they have done and failed to do in striving for our 
goal. 

My proposal is that we summon to the bar of judgment 
of this society those groups of men who call themselves the 
sons and servants of Alma Mater. Let them appear in 
turn, graduate, undergraduate, teacher, president, trustee, 
benefactor, friend. Let each one come and we will see how 
he comports himself in presence of the flag we raise. 



And first, by rules of good procedure, I summon the 
alumni. In the courts of moral judgment it has been 
decreed of men and institutions that by their fruits they 
shall be known. Let the college, then, bring forth its fruits, 
those spirits which it has nourished and cultured; let us 
see how good or bad they are. 

And as the court prepares to hear the case, what is the 
charge? It is a serious one. "Their heads have been 
turned round; they who should look ahead are looking back; 
the college, when it taught them, set them with eyes before 
to see the way, but they have craned their necks until the 
muscles are all awry; their eyes are looking backward. 
And be it further said that they have done this thing be- 
cause of love for us, though a mistaken love. They think 
the college far behind them, an experience of their youth, 
and so they look around. But it is far before, leading them 
on, and they are missing it because their heads are turned. " 

"But," the defense will urge, "this is a new and strange 
demand. There is no law upon the statute-book that 
specifies which way a college man shall hold his head. 
Have we not done the things the college asked of us ? Have 
we not loved it, worked for it, supported it, declared abroad 



THE COLLEGE AS CRITIC 69 

that it is best of all the colleges the world has ever seen? 
We should have thought that some sort of moral leprosy 
had befallen any man who failed of this. Have we not 
labored hard to serve the fortunes of the college? Have we 
not arranged and sat through banquets, have we not can- 
vassed the schools for boys to fill the ranks, have we not 
formed committees and councils to make the college grow 
and boom; have we not given our time and our money, 
and planned that other men should give their money too?" 
Yes, they have done these things; and college presidents, 
whose hope it is to change the baser metals into gold, have 
called them good. But in the judgment of the court we 
hold to-day, that verdict must be modified. "These 
things which you have done are good not in themselves but 
only in so far as they express a loyalty which lies far deeper 
than they go. These acts of kindness to the college would 
seem to make of it a beggar to its children, a thing that 
lives on alms, that cries aloud for bounty. But in the 
deeper sense, the college is not poor but rich; she has 
great wealth to give; and in the last resort the only thing 
her sons can do for her is to take from her hands the riches 
that she offers. To take, and not to give, is what she asks 
her children. And he who fails to take from her and take 
again, no matter what he does in outward act, is not her 
own; she will have none of him." 

But now another plea may come. "Of course," we shall 
be told, "no one would ever measure loyalty in terms of 
banquets and committees, gifts made and students found. 
These are the incidentals of a man's affection for his college. 
But the real test lies, as you say, in the use one makes of 
what she gave him. He serves his college best who justi- 
fies her training by the work he does. Let him go out and 
make his place in the world. Let him succeed and do, 
and men will give the glory to the college from which he 
came." And so we count our graduates and study their 
careers. We find among them doctors, lawyers, merchants, 
ministers, teachers, and, if their work is good, we say, 



jo THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

"There is the proof; see what a college we have here; 
you know it by its fruits indeed; its men have made their 
marks in life; need any more be said?" 

But here again the plea is only half a truth and cannot be 
accepted for the whole. We are not trying at the bar a 
school of business or a school of law, but a college of liberal 
arts. We wish for evidence that those whom it has trained 
have done its work, have not departed from its spirit. 
What shall the evidence be; how shall we show that any 
man has done the college work? I know no other test than 
this — that man is loyal to a college who shares its interests, 
does what it would do. If a college believes that biology 
should be studied, no man can be a member of the college 
unless he wants to know the truths biology has to tell. 
If it be the purpose of a college to follow after learning, 
whether it be science or philosophy, literature or art, no 
man is of the college who has ceased from that pursuit. 
What is the college for? Is it not this: to start men on the 
way of learning? If you would know in this case or in that 
whether or not philosophy has been well taught, I should 
advise that you inquire whether or not the boys who learned 
in college have kept on learning through their later years. 
If economics be not studied by the graduates, it did but 
little for the boys who listened to the talk or read about 
it in the books. The college is a group of men who follow 
after learning; if any man has ceased from this, I care not 
how he may succeed in other things, he is not of the college. 

There is a current theory implicit in the plea just made, 
which we who judge to-day cannot accept and must con- 
demn while now we have the chance. It is the theory 
that what boys study in college makes no difference. "All 
that is needed for a college education is that some subjects 
shall be studied well, that proper method shall be gained, and 
so the mind shall be well trained to meet the serious tasks 
which wait it in the world." That theory has done so 
much of harm in every way, the court with difficulty re- 
strains itself within the bounds of proper language. The 



THE COLLEGE AS CRITIC 71 

theory makes of literature and science, history and art, 
not human interests and pursuits, but five-finger exercises 
for children's discipline. It says to boys: "These are the 
things we give to drill you in your plastic youthful years; 
take them and do as you are told until the drilling has 
been done; and then forget them when you have become 
a man." 

But as against this theory, I protest, the value of the 
subjects taught in college is that they are the learning which 
serves men as their guide. They are not play or drill for 
children; they are the wisdom of the world gathered for 
human life. They are not learned in four short years nor 
yet in fourscore either. As against the counter-theory I 
would declare, "No subject has a right within a college 
course unless we may expect our boys who study it to keep 
on studying it so long as they may live." I know the 
statement is extreme and "subject" is a term that needs 
to be defined. But I am crying out against a monstrous 
thing, and so I cry aloud, forgetting for the moment the 
presence of the court and the sobriety its laws demand. 

But now to sum it up, what shall we say of college gradu- 
ates? Are we to judge them good or bad? And still we 
say, in spite of pleas, "not very good; their heads are 
turned around." I fear they think of college as a place 
in which their liberal studies reached an end, a place in 
which to have one's taste of history and art, philosophy 
and science, and then to put them aside except so far as 
they may serve professional ends. The college is for them 
too much a school for boys, a home of childish interests and 
pursuits, — a thing which they may help, may serve, may 
love, — the place from which they come to meet the world, 
and yet essentially a place which they have left behind with 
other boyhood things. But they are wrong. College is not 
an ending but a commencement of a way of life. Here 
men are not to cease from liberal study, but to find out 
what it is. Here are revealed the vital interests of mankind 
and so set forth that one may take them to himself, make 



72 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

them his own and follow where they lead. No, he who thinks 
of college as a place to cease from learning, to get it done 
with so that he may go to work, is all turned round. Good 
fellow he may be, loyal and true, strong and efficient, and 
yet the mother whom he loves yearns over him in vain, 
because his eyes are seeking her where she is not. How 
shall she make him turn and see her where she is? 

ii 

And now the undergraduate comes forth to face the court. 
He is a clever lad, a very clever lad at meeting charges. 
I know that well from many years of being a Dean. "What 
do you say?" we ask him. And he replies, "Whatever 
charge you make I will admit, and yet I am 'Not guilty.' 
There may be something wrong with me but I am not to 
blame." And if you do not catch him up he will go on with 
counter-charge something like this: "I understand you 
say I do not study. Whose fault is that? I study hard 
enough at law or medicine or office desk. Why don't I 
study hard with you? And why, I'd like to know, do so 
many of my friends, four out of every ten who come to get 
the training which you give, put it aside and, leaving college, 
turn to other things that seem worth while? Oh, yes, 
there's something wrong all right; but, it seems to me, 
it's up to you, not me." What can one do in face of such 
a counter-charge as this? The boy is right. We have not 
even made him see that "wrong all right" is wrong, that 
"up to you" is not a phrase to use in presence of the court 
or Dean. But there the trouble lies. Somehow we have 
not made him see. The court dismisses the defendant as 
"guilty but not responsible," and as he goes he cocks an 
eye and grins delightfully. "I knew you wouldn't get me," 
he declares, "you'd better try the Faculty." 

in 

I must confess some hesitation in taking the step which 
now awaits us. To summon the teacher to appear before 



THE COLLEGE AS CRITIC 73 

the bar of judgment requires much courage: the thought 
of it may make one tremble and shrink for fear of meeting 
at some turn the ghost of Academic Freedom. But, 1 
recall, it is not I who give the summons, but the society 
that speaks through me. And so, leaning on one another, 
we call the college teacher to appear. It may be he will 
come. And if he does, let us go on. 

"You are the man who made the graduate?" we ask. 
"Yes," he replies, "I made him out of such stuff as was 
provided me." "And are you satisfied with what you 
have produced?" "Oh, no," he says, "the stuff was not 
adapted to my purpose. You see, the boys who come to 
college are not well fitted for the college work. There is 
no learning in their homes, nor any love of it; there is no 
genuine training in the schools; the social world from 
which they come, to which they go, sets little value on the 
scholarship we have to give, and so the boys have little 
longing for it." "We understand you then to say, the work 
is unsuccessful but you are not to blame?" "Yes, that is 
it. When homes and schools and social life are better, I 
shall do better work, but not till then." 

>And shall we let him too escape, after the manner of the 
undergraduate? No, he must stand and take responsibility. 
There are not many things of which I am sure about a 
college, but this I know — the teacher is the college in the 
active sense; all other things are circumstance, machinery, 
arrangements; he is the mind that learns and teaches; 
if he does well, then all is well; if he does ill, the college is a 
failure. 

Admitting, then, that there are many evils of circum- 
stance, what is our charge against the college teacher? 
What does he fail to do that might be done to master cir- 
cumstance? He seems to me to lack a proper sense of his 
importance. He does not clearly realize the task he has 
to do. He teaches subjects, studies, fields; he does not 
lead men in following learning as the guide of life. May 
I explain? 



74 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

If learning is to be the guide of life, it must be one, not 
many. Learning is criticism; it is interpretation. And 
criticism, what is that? It is the bringing together of 
separate things to find out their relations. It is the calling 
to account of this or that in terms of that or this. It is 
the finding of principles that run through many separate 
things and bind them together, making them one. Learn- 
ing interprets; it takes the fragments of our life, our knowl- 
edge, and makes of them a unity, a whole. Each bit, 
by itself, is clear but meaningless. Learning interprets 
them, gives them significance one for another, makes out 
of them a scheme of life, a system of knowledge which one 
can understand and use. Learning interprets, criticizes, 
makes the many one. 

But what of college teachers? Do they believe in learn- 
ing? It seems to me that many of them believe much 
more in subjects, believe in knowledge in the scattered 
sense. Each one of them knows one field well, better than 
any other member of his college does. This is his field 
and here he speaks with high authority. But does he talk 
of other fields as well? No, he had better not do that! 
To speak of things that others know better than you is not 
professionally wise. You may be wrong, and then where 
are you? But if the teachers all do this, where are the 
students? We in our wealth of knowing have split up 
knowledge into* many hundred parts. Of these a teacher 
takes some two or three. The undergraduate, by our laws, 
takes five a semester, ten a year, and when in four years 
he has taken forty of them, his work is done and he may 
graduate. But does he understand the things he knows, 
can he interpret them, make use of them in knowing life? 
How shall he know his subjects in this way if they are 
taught the other way? How shall his mind be liberalized 
by minds whose law it is to know the special from the 
special point of view? I wonder if our teachers do believe 
in liberal training? 

Is this a strange, nonsensical demand? I do not wish 



THE COLLEGE AS CRITIC 75 

to be absurd nor yet to be misunderstood. But it seems 
clear, terribly clear, to me that teachers in the colleges are 
not commanding and dominating the spirits of their boys 
because they have no purpose which has a proper claim 
to domination. They can relate their subjects to the 
trades, can show how botany will serve the grower of food, 
how physics guides the engineer, how economics helps the 
business man, and if a boy is looking to a trade, they grip 
him hard and carry him away. Yet this is not the learning 
that we seek, but only some fragments of it. Can they 
interpret botany and food supply, physics and engineering, 
economics and business, each for the others and each for 
any other bit of knowledge that men have gained about the 
world ? Can they bring all this knowledge into order, 
reducing it to principles, making of it a knowing of the 
world in which men live and of the human life itself? Can 
they interpret what we know and make it all significant? 

I know what men will say against this thing I urge. 
How can a man know more than one field well? And if 
one cannot, what is the value of making- judgments in a 
realm you have not mastered, of trying to understand the 
things you do not know? But what is the alternative? 
Are men to be, so far as they may study at all, simply a 
group of experts, each master in his field? And what of 
those who do not specialize in any branch of knowledge? 
Are they to have no intellectual life at all? Just as a 
protest, I would define a liberally educated man as one 
who tries to understand the whole of knowledge as well 
as one man can. I know full well that every special judg-, 
ment that he makes will be inadequate. I know the 
experts have him on the hip, each expert at one point.. 
But yet for human living as a whole, for living as men should 
live, I'll match a liberally educated man against the field 
of experts and have no fear that any one of them will beat 
him. 

Have we not tragic illustration of the principle to-day 
in this great war which we have entered? Have we not 



76 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

seen a people which was the very centre of learning of the 
world, beloved and honored for the knowledge that it gave, 
have we not seen it let that knowledge fall asunder into 
separate parts, the sciences and arts which make life merely 
efficient? Have we not seen the generous, human view of 
life which bound it to the world contract and split to special, 
partial views that cut men off, and send them at each others' 
throats to murder? And just the tragedy is this, — the 
special view when taken by itself is so convincing and so 
clear, so accurate, that if you take it as it stands it cannot 
but be true; you must be ruthless in your disregard of all 
things else. But meanwhile other men with other points 
of view fully as clear are blind to you as you are blind to 
them. And so men fight. But we have entered on the 
war to put an end to fighting, not for a special interest of 
our own, not for a private cause which we would serve, but 
in the hope that men may come to understanding, may 
find a way to know each other and to live in peace. 

It seems to me we need to-day a Socrates to come again 
as Socrates of old to Athens, to tell us that just as life is 
one, so learning is one and every man should have it so far 
as one man can. And then with Socrates we might inquire 
how learning may be taught, and just like him might gather 
young men round us to study the way of life. If that 
should come again, we should have colleges as nowhere in 
the world we have them now. 

What, then, should teachers say to boys who come to 
college? I think they should say this: "The college is a 
place where men are studying human life, man and the 
world in which he lives. We take it that your coming here 
means that you join us in that enterprise, that you are eager 
to understand what human living is and does." And if a 
man outside should hear the words, I doubt not he would 
sound a loud guffaw. "Oh ho/' he says, "you ask a boy 
of eighteen years to master human life, to know it as a 
whole; is this the thing that you would have him do in 
college?" Yes, that is the thing he should do in college, 



THE COLLEGE AS CRITIC 77 

should do so long as he may live; he will not finish it in 
four short years, nor yet in fourscore either. But he may 
join the brotherhood of those who fly the flag, who have put 
learning at the helm of life. He may array himself with 
men, wiser than he, who have labored long and are yet 
laboring for the cause. He may join others, foolish like 
himself, but who in joyful youth delight in doing things 
that never can be done. He may feel kinship with the 
older men who went before along the path and yet are 
traveling it, with hope and fear, in the goodly company 
of those who seek to see the wayand follow it. This, it 
would seem to me, would be to go to^college. 

What will the teacher answer to the verdict of the court ? 
What will he say? If I have known his spirit there are two 
answers he will make. First, "I cannot do this task; 
it is too great." And second, "Shall I have a chance to 
try it freely, with no one coercing or restraining me?" 

And to the first the court replies: "Whether you can or 
not, you must. No people can live and rule itself by its 
own thought and will, no people can be free, unless it be 
interpreted and criticized within itself. And if the college 
cannot give such learning, then who can? You may not 
shun the task. To you as critic and interpreter, all men 
must come. To you the church, the state, the home, the 
school, rich man and poor, the builder-up, the breaker- 
down, each one must bring his thoughts, his hopes and 
fears, his doubts and creeds, his strivings and opinions, 
and you must show him what they are in terms of their 
relations to others which his fellows bring. You must be 
sane as other men are not; you must have knowledge 
which others cannot gain; you must be fearless and honest 
as others, tied by interest, may seldom be; you are the 
student set apart to view the whole, to try to understand, 
a free untrammeled human spirit seeking the truth for 
guidance of mankind. And you must gather round you 
younger men, young lads whose wits are keen, whose wills 
are strong and spirits high, and set them to the task, must 



78 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

make them join with you in trying to think the problems 
through, and then must send them forth to play their 
parts in the activities of men and yet to follow learning 
as their guide. You will not do it well; your heart will 
break with disappointment and despair; and yet you will 
keep on for very joy of it, because in doing this you make 
a college, and that is what, as teacher, you are to do." 

And now the second answer: "Shall you be free with no 
one coercing or restraining you? Who would restrain 
you?" "Why, any special point of view that thinks itself 
the truth might try to hinder me. Perhaps the church, 
perhaps the state, perhaps the home or school, perhaps 
the radical who finds the world all wrong, or the conservative 
who finds it right, — each one of these, thinking his own the 
truth, may hate me for the other truths I hold beside his 
own. And shall I yet be free to criticize, to seek the mean- 
ing of the whole?" And still the court replies: "Of course 
you shall; who could restrain you?" And then the secret 
fear that lurks within the teacher's heart comes out. "Per- 
haps the college might restrain me. Have you forgotten 
that I am chosen and paid by other members of the college 
group? I do not choose myself as teacher. I do not 
decide whether or not I shall be kept, nor on what terms. 
I am the servant of another group of men whose will is 
law. Perhaps they might restrain me." 



IV 

It is quite clear the court must summon the trustee, to 
ask of him the answer to the teacher's question. "Are 
you the owner of the college?" "Yes, in the legal sense, 
I am." "And who elected you to hold this place of power?" 
"My fellow trustees." "And have you, as a group, the 
power to choose the teachers, to fix their terms of service 
and of compensation, to tell what subjects shall be taught 
and how they shall be taught?" "We have." "And are 
you as a group the representatives of all the different classes, 



THE COLLEGE AS CRITIC 79 

interests, and parties within the social order, or are you very 
much alike in point of view?" "We are, I think, a special 
group, and being chosen by ourselves, we tend to keep 
within a fairly limited point of view." "What then, we ask 
of you, shall be our answer to the teacher's question? Is 
he a free man in his work? May he have confidence that 
in the task of bringing different points of view together 
you will support him, and not demand that he give favor 
to your own?" And here, I think, a trustee who is honest 
and intelligent, will hesitate and qualify his answer. "We 
are not paragons of wisdom," he will say; "we have our 
frailties and our prejudices, our interests and our limitations, 
and doubtless these have their effects upon the judgments 
which we make about the business of the college. And 
yet against this fact two others may be weighed. We are 
trustees, not for the furthering of our interests, but for the 
sake of education, because we wish to do whatever we can 
to help the cause of learning. Again, although we are a 
special group, we are upon the whole within the class of 
those who hold the splendid human faith in freedom of 
thought and speech, by which all higher civilizations have 
been lifted up. You ask me whether or not the teacher 
may be free, and I reply, 'Yes, that is our purpose, however 
well or ill we may succeed in making it effective." 

What, then, shall we say of the trustee? I think his plea 
is good. He does not claim to do more than he can. In 
the days gone by he has done splendid service for the col- 
leges. And yet the method of self-election cannot remain 
as a final form of college organization. A college is a place 
of criticism. From this it follows that not even in the 
legal sense can it be permanently owned by any special 
self-selecting group of men. I am not raising here the 
question of special interest or self-seeking. That issue 
seems to me at present unimportant. I am not asking 
how the personnel of boards of trustees may be improved. 
I do not think that an}^ other method of choice would have 
given us trustees so able or so well adapted to their work. 



8o THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

But the real issue is that of the intellectual leadership of a 
people who believe that they believe in democracy. The 
colleges cannot lead, as critics lead, unless the people trust 
them. And in the field of thought, as in the realm of 
politics, our people will not permanently follow leaders 
whom others choose to guide them. The college as critic 
must command the confidence of every one who comes 
to it for judgment. It may not be of any party, any sect, 
or any creed. It may not be committed to any interest, 
any cause or any class. It must in some sense stand apart, 
aloof; it must command the confidence of men. I think 
that we have kept the present scheme of choosing our trus- 
tees because there is no other group whose wisdom we could 
trust to choose them. But we are on the road toward 
giving this responsibility to the graduates. What charge 
could be more terrible against the college than this — that 
those whom it has trained, whom it sends out prepared to 
care for other institutions cannot be trusted to take care 
of it? However terrible the charge, I think it has so far 
been true. But in the future, as we learn to do our work, 
I think our graduates will be toward us more nearly what 
they ought to be. I think their heads will be turned round 
again, and as they go with us along the way we shall trust 
them to take the fortunes of the college in their hands, to 
keep it safe and free from harm. They have the will to 
do it now, and we must add to this an understanding of 
what the college is and what it wills to do. 



But now the teacher speaks again: "What of the presi- 
dent? You have not summoned him. His is the power 
which all men fear." Then, let him come! What is the 
charge? "He is too powerful. Through him trustees 
must act and speak; by him teachers are recommended 
for election; to his approval teachers must submit their 
work; by him the college is explained abroad; to him 



THE COLLEGE AS CRITIC 81 

come graduates seeking for information and offering advice; 
he must be master of the college life; he, as the common 
servant of them all, assumes to dominate the whole." This 
is the charge. What does the culprit answer? We feel 
his kinship with the undergraduate when once again we 
hear the plea, "Guilty but not responsible." The president 
is far more powerful than he ought to be. But just what 
is his power? Is it not this, that he adjusts conflicting 
interests? All about him are parties and causes, men who 
cannot agree, and they demand some one to judge between 
them. Trustees and donors, departments and faculty, 
teachers and other teachers, alumni, old and young, serious 
and gay, the undergraduate boy of every type and kind, — 
each has his point of view, each has his special purpose, 
each serves a cause. And all these forces surging in the 
college must find some place of meeting, some point of 
contact. That point of contact is the president. But all 
the power he has comes from the forces round about him. 
If they can understand each other; if they, amid their 
separate points of view, can find the common purpose of 
the college as a whole; if they are minded not so much 
to urge the special cause as to advance the general cause of 
learning, — just in so far as they do this, administrative 
power will dwindle and fall away. I do not mean that 
members of the college are selfishly pursuing separate 
claims, but I do mean that we have fallen into a way of 
doing college business that constantly increases presidential 
power. I think this way of doing things has come upon 
us quite inevitably, — and that because we have not been 
content with studying and teaching; we have been growing 
too. At times it seems as if that were our greater task. 
More wealth has come, more books, more land, more 
buildings, more prestige, more students, more courses, more 
teachers, more of everything. And every member of the 
college has been stirred by instincts of growth to claim his 
share and use it. But I am daring to hope that for the 
colleges at least the days of growth are nearly past, that we 



82 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

shall soon decide we have enough of things that men can 
give, so much we cannot well take more. And when that 
day does come, we may be quiet and peaceful, doing our 
work. And when the day is here, I venture to predict 
the president will lose much of his power, will take the 
place he really ought to hold. During the time of growth 
the struggling, fighting forces of the college life have torn 
him from his proper place and hurled him aloft above the 
heads of all. And they have kept him there by the sheer 
pressure of their contacts from beneath. But in the hap- 
pier days to come when conflicts cease, I hope he may 
escape from his captivity, may come to earth to stand 
among his peers, teacher and student as his fellows are, 
officially, if you please, the chairman of the faculty. 

You see the court predicts that in the coming years two 
changes will take place in college organization — two 
changes by absorption. Trustees, we think, will be ab- 
sorbed by graduates, become their council, agents, repre- 
sentatives. And presidents will be absorbed by faculties, 
lions by lambs. And we shall have within the college walls 
three groups, — teachers, their pupils, and the pupils they 
have had before. Thus shall the teacher lose his fear of 
interference from without, thus shall he be the college in 
the active sense. 

VI 

The college as teacher! The teacher as critic and inter- 
preter! That is thejword I bring to you to-day, the prin- 
ciple that underlies all the deliberations of this our court. 
Do we need teachers, scholars who stand aside to criticize 
and to interpret us? Surely we do. We as a people are 
embarked upon a fearsome enterprise. We have the thirst 
for freedom on our lips, the zest for justice in our veins. 
Do we need guidance as we venture forth? Never did 
people need it more. And we must make it for ourselves; 
freedom accepts no guidance from outside. We must put 
learning at the helm of life. And who shall place and keep 



THE COLLEGE AS CRITIC 83 

it there if not the colleges? I dream of college teachers 
who shall be guides for all the thinking of our people — 
men who shall watch the things we do, shall understand 
them as the men engaged in them can never do, men whom 
their fellows reverence and trust because they find them 
intimate with truth — interpreters and critics of our com- 
mon life. I would not have them run to every market- 
place to shout their theories; I would not have them claimed 
by any party, sect or creed; I would not have them try 
to do the active work which active men can do with greater 
skill than they. But I would have them at tHe helm of 
life, looking before to see the way men go. And round them 
here and there would gather boys to study with them and 
to catch their spirit. And older men, knowing their teach- 
ing, would come to talk with them and share their wisdom. 
Thus, at this point and at that, would be a college, men 
following a way of life, a life with learning at the helm. 



II 

THE FREEDOM OF THE COLLEGE 



THERE have been many disputes about freedom. And 
there will be many more. It is a matter about which 
men feel deeply. It has therefore been argued about 
more than it has been studied. "Shall not a man be free to 
think what he thinks and say what he thinks?" one group de- 
mands. "What are you going to do with a fellow who has no 
common sense?" retorts the other. And on the relations of 
Liberty and License, especially as both names begin with Li, 
there have been many passionate pronunciamentos. 

We are apparently just entering on another phase of this 
old conflict. It is presented very commonly in the head- 
lines of our newspapers. "Another professor dismissed. 
Teaching investigated and condemned. Faculty members 
protest in vain. Trustees firm." The reader is given the 
impression that a conflict is going on in the colleges, that 
trustees and professors are arrayed in opposing camps. 
It is understood that one party is demanding freedom of 
thought and speech while the other is insisting upon com- 
mon decency and common sense. And further, it is noted 
that the two parties find their demands mutually hostile 
and irreconcilable. Just why freedom and common sense 
should be irreconcilable does not appear to the casual ob- 
server, or perhaps appears only to him. And yet it is very 
easily taken for granted that they are. And so the issue 
is formulated. Trustees and professors are in conflict 
about freedom of thought and speech. 

Now if there be such a conflict within the college, it is 



THE FREEDOM OF THE COLLEGE 85 

not to be avoided. It would be well to have it out, and that 
quickly. I should like, in this paper, to contribute, so far 
as I may, to the "having it out." I do not expect to end the 
controversy. My purpose is rather to find out whether or 
not there is one, and if so what it is, Especially I should 
like to know just what it is that the professor wants and that 
the trustee is said to be unwilling he should have. What is 
academic freedom? 

In the first place, what kind of a thing is it ? Is it a right, 
or a duty, or an obligation, or a privilege, or a perquisite, 
or what is it? Is it something which the professor wants 
for his own private satisfaction? That would make it a 
perquisite or a privilege. And we should have the very 
natural question, "Why may not other people have the 
same freedom which the professors claim?" But the ques- 
tion which we really ask on this plane is just the opposite 
one. The question is, whether the professor may have the 
same degree of freedom as other men have; whether, 
because of his peculiar responsibilities, he ought not to be 
specially limited in thought and speech. There are, we all 
know, dangers with professors. There is always the danger 
that some one will take a professor seriously; and so it may 
be necessary to take care what he says. And it is also 
possible that his thinking may carry him along one of the 
roads that thought travels, that he may really get some- 
where else; therefore there may be need of prescribing 
whither he shall and shall not go. These are dangers which 
mark him off from the common run of men. And so the 
question on this level is, to what degree the professor should 
be denied this privilege of freedom of thought and speech 
which a democracy normally allows its citizens. 

But freedom as a privilege is not fundamental. The duty 
or obligation to be free is the essential thing. I take it 
that the community is so related to the college and the 
college so related to the professor, that the community 
makes a demand upon the college with regard to the pro- 
fessor. It says, "I demand of you that for the sake of my 



86 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

welfare you see to it that the study of my scholars and 
the learning of my children be free." And the duty, the 
obligation, of the professor is to the college just as the 
obligation of the college is to the community. In order 
do to its service, he must be free; he is a trickster and a 
fraud if he is not free. When he speaks of freedom, he is 
not playing with his own perquisites and possessions; he is 
facing his master and the commands of his duty are upon 
him. 

The essential principle in the doctrine of academic freedom 
as a duty may, I think, be stated in this way. Most men, 
outside our institutions of learning, having the choice be- 
tween freedom and non-freedom of thought and speech, 
choose the privilege of the latter. They prefer not to be 
free. It is for this reason that they demand that the man 
within the college shall adopt the former. To explain this 
statement, I must try to explain what colleges are for. 
If we can understand this, I think we may get a grip on 
academic freedom. May I therefore try to describe the 
mission of the college with regard to human opinions and 
judgments? 

Every one knows, or may know if he stops to think about 
it, that his opinions, the judgments which he believes, are 
not very good, are not so true as they might be. "Mine 
own they are," we say, "but poor things." In the realm 
of politics, for example, we all have opinions and act upon 
them, but we know that we do not know very much about 
politics, and further that, if we did know more, we could 
make better opinions. And the men who differ from us, 
as well as those who agree with us, are in like situation. 
They too are doing each his best, and yet it is not very 
good. Our judgments upon politics, yours and mine, are 
rather poor things; they are not very true; for reasons of our 
own we claim the privilege of holding opinions, of believing 
them, of acting on them, even though we know that as 
opinions they are no better intellectually than are we who 
make them. 



THE FREEDOM OF THE COLLEGE 87 

There are two ways in which this unsatisfactoriness of 
our opinions is brought home to us, and each of them seems 
to me to reveal the need of colleges which are free. 

The more obvious bit of evidence about the quality of 
our opinions is that our neighbors think less highly of them 
than we do ourselves; in fact, they contradict them. And 
these contradictions come, not only from our equals in 
intelligence, but also from our superiors. I may believe 
in Social Cooperation, but my neighbor holds fast to In- 
dividualism. And on the whole he seems to be as good a 
mind as I. In other words, I think that my opinion is 
true, but just as good a mind as mine thinks it is not. That 
makes the chances even that I am wrong. But worse and 
more disturbing than our equals are our superiors, the 
better men who differ from us. No matter what opinion 
we hold, we know that other minds, better informed and 
better trained than ours, can make a better. And so, 
however brave a face we put on it, we know that our su- 
periors, the men whose mental fibre is stronger and more 
delicate, can think their way to better thoughts than ours. 
I feel sure that this awareness of our ineptitude, this knowl- 
edge of our ignorance, is one of the reasons why we build 
colleges. 

The second and more disturbing observation about our 
beliefs is that of their connection with our interests. Here 
again, not in a conscious way, but none the less effectively, 
we seem to have chosen not to be free. Men seem to think 
by classes, and thoughts to express desires and needs rather 
than facts. We do not like the story that when the Con- 
stitution was made men voted in groups according to the 
bearing of the votes upon their holdings or lack of holdings 
in property. And yet the story is told. And in the telling 
is revealed, not conscious lack of honesty, not conscious 
putting of private interests before the public good, but 
rather a blind unconscious bias in human thinking. And 
in the present day there is no lack of illustrations. Holders 
of property to-day are very much agreed about the rights 



88 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

of property. And laboring men are on the whole con- 
vinced that labor does not get its share and must have more. 
Germans agree that Germany must have her place out in 
the sun, and France and England find the moral law de- 
manding that they keep the Germans in their proper place. 
Even professors sometimes agree — as to the interests they 
have in common. They are in large agreement concerning 
college presidents, college trustees, and professorial freedom. 
They hold the dogma of their class, that members of the 
class should have more power. And when one leaves his 
class and joins the presidents, we know the merry farce of 
changing points of view, of widening experience, of greater 
insight into many things. 

I do not wish to press the point too far. I am not saying 
that human beliefs are simply selfish desires finding expres- 
sion in the forms of thought. The man who proves that 
human thinking is "interested" in this sense, proves that 
his proof is "interested," and we should ask of him not 
whether his proof is good or bad, but what he hopes to gain 
for himself by setting up the proof. Nor am I taking as 
my own the current popular philosophy which scofFs at 
"absolutes" and finds the meaning of truth in service to 
the actual ends of actual men. That doctrine too is ren- 
dering doubtful service in these times of stress. But I am 
only saying this — that as we view our fellows and our- 
selves, we find ourselves in groups according to our interests, 
and in those groups we find common beliefs related to 
those interests. There is a bias in our thinking. We 
cannot trust ourselves to be impartial. To do our daily 
work we must be special in our points of view. Uncon- 
sciously we use our thoughts as instruments to further our 
ends. But when we stop to think about it, we hate the 
special interested point of view; we know that it is not 
true, not worthy of our deeper selves. And in the seeking 
for escape from it, we find a second impulse to the building 
of the colleges, the colleges which shall be free. 

If now the college be defined in terms of these two im- 



THE FREEDOM OF THE COLLEGE 89 

pulses, it is essentially, not accidentally, a place of freedom. 
It is a place in which the human mind is seeking deliverance 
from its bonds — the bonds of partial knowledge and self- 
interest. It has no hope of fully achieving such freedom, 
and yet this end defines its work. Men form their opinions 
from partial knowledge; the college must know, so far as 
may be known, all that the human mind has thought and 
learned which bears on these opinions. Men fashion their 
thoughts according as their interests and activities have 
molded and shaped their minds; the college may have no 
special interests shaping it. It must in this sense stand 
apart, viewing all interests of men alike with equal eye, and 
measuring each in terms of every other and the whole. It 
is a place of knowledge and of criticism. 

What then is academic freedom? It is, it seems to me, 
the very quality of a college. The question whether or not 
a college is free is meaningless. An institution which is not 
intellectually free is not a college, whatever else it be. 
States may be servants of partial insights and partial in- 
terests, and so may factories and corporations, and even 
schools of medicine; but not so colleges. A college is our 
social and individual striving to escape the bonds which the 
world's work would fix upon us. It is the search for free- 
dom from ourselves 

11 

The actual carrying on of the college enterprise brings 
one to many rather puzzling problems. Even for an 
individual self-criticism is not an easy task. To do two 
things at once — to go about one's work, planning and 
acting as if one's thoughts were true, and yet to know and 
act as if one's thoughts were wrong and partial — to do 
both things at once is hard for busy, single-minded men. 
It is no wonder that we fail. But it is even harder for an 
institution like a college to do the task. A college has so 
many independent parts which do not know each other, 
which take themselves for granted, which have not stopped 



9 o THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

to think about themselves, or other parts, or even the 
college as a whole. Trustees, professors, presidents, de- 
partments, graduates, students, donors, outside world are 
all factors in the situation. Each has its share in making 
for our people knowledge and self-criticism. And they 
have hardly begun to criticize, to understand themselves, 
to realize the work they have to do. 

But worse than either of these difficulties is the fact that, 
though the college has compounded its medicines to cure 
the public mind, the patient does not come for treatment; 
he does not know that he is ill. We say that colleges are 
built because men know their ignorance, that is, the igno- 
rance of their fellows, and wish to cure it. But motives 
are not always clear, even to those who act on them. And I 
am sure that, in the large, our public does not keenly feel 
the need of criticism; on the other hand, I am not sure 
that, if it did, the college is the doctor whom it could choose 
for diagnosis and prescription. 

What shall we do to lure the patient, to get some living 
forms on which to practice our profession ? I see no other 
way except to hang our shingle out and let it swing in public 
places. Perhaps to change the figure would give it more 
attractiveness. "Clearing House for Opinions; Discount 
on Popular Prejudices; Foreign Exchange!" And if we 
catch a patient, we must make it clear to him that he is ill, 
yes, very ill, and that the social mind is ill also, and all his 
friends. I fear the method is not quite professional. But 
something must be done to make people understand that 
colleges are ready to do a piece of work, and that the work 
is sorely needed in our country and by our generation. 

Assuming then that we have caught a patient, may I 
proceed to tell him just what our methods are and what 
they are not, to arouse his hopes, excite his fears, especially 
to let him know what college freedom is? 

And first, let it be understood, the college is not simply 
a school for boys. It is a place to which boys should go 
because the teachers of men are to be found there, scholars 



THE FREEDOM OF THE COLLEGE 91 

whom men respect and honor as their guides and leaders. 
No man who cannot lead his peers is fit to teach the younger 
generation. The education of a boy consists in coming 
into active contact with a group of minds which have com- 
mand of human thinking; he learns by feeling how they 
think, and by imitating them. 

Again, the college has no list of dogmas or doctrines 
which it seeks to teach. There is no catalogue of things 
to be believed, nor any list of problems which should not 
be discussed. I have heard the suggestion made that 
certain matters are not to be regarded as "subjects of 
reasonable controversy." I am sure that for a college no 
such prohibition can be made. I do not mean that every 
problem of human life will be discussed by every student 
all the time. There must be pedagogic common sense in 
choosing things to think about. But are there matters 
which are not "subjects of reasonable controversy"? I 
know no other test than this — any matter concerning 
which reasonable men differ is a subject of reasonable con- 
troversy. And if there be such reasonable disagreements, 
young minds should know about them in proper time. 

On the other hand, if there are still other subjects on 
which all men have the same opinions, there can be little 
harm in letting younger people know of these agreements. 
The only genuine pedagogic sin I know is that of dragging 
our students by the nose to preconceived conclusions, 
blinding their eyes to paths that lead on this side or on that 
toward truth, and yet pretending that we are leading them 
into the ways of human thought. Such teaching is not 
honest; and it will find its own reward for those who give 
as well as those who take it. 

I do not mean that there is no place for schools which 
choose to teach some special doctrines which they think 
important. Such schools are different from free colleges, 
not in kind but only in degree. No college, however free, 
can escape the prepossessions of its background, the mental 
attitude from which it springs. But in the schools of 



92 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

which I speak, some special conscious limitations are taken 
on; the school commits itself to teaching this or that as 
true. Such schools must first of all try to be fair to doc- 
trines other than their own. But they must also deal 
honestly with those for whose support they ask. They 
have no right to put a label on and then to act and teach 
as if the label did not mark them off from others; that is 
what honest labels do. 

Does the receiving of gifts from private donors or public 
governments destroy or hamper the freedom of the college? 
Yes, in some degree. Taking the college world at large, 
such influences are subtly, or not so subtly, felt. But 
there is no essential reason why they should be present. 
If they are, some one has failed to understand his task 
and hence to do it. No college, clearly conceived and 
honestly administered, would take a gift to which such 
influence was attached. No college is for sale, and nothing 
that is for sale, subtly or obviously, can be a college. 

I think that the Association of University Professors, 
fine as it is in purpose, has tended to increase misappre- 
hension at this point. The Association in its proposals 
and discussions has sundered the college in two. It has 
opposed the teachers and the administrators. Trustees 
and presidents, it seems to say, must further the material 
interests of the college, must pay the bills, and find the 
wherewithal to pay them. Professors, on the other hand, 
have no concern with interests like these; they are the 
scholars and teachers, interested in the truth. Professors 
are free, but trustees and presidents — well, they must 
get the money, so perhaps they must give up some measure 
of their freedom. What does this mean? 

It sometimes seems as if professors said, "Let presidents 
and trustees get money as they can; let them make promises 
to donors or legislators if need be; but we will see that the 
promises they give are broken; no man can influence us." 
Professors free; trustees and presidents slaves, that seems 
to be the doctrine. But surely such a doctrine is false 



THE FREEDOM OF THE COLLEGE 93 

and hateful. No college can live half-slave and yet half- 
free. Professors have no right to freedom unless the college 
as a whole is free. The freedom of professors is a myth 
unless it lives within the freedom of the college. 

I think that in the large, with very little reservation, the 
colleges are free, trustees and presidents as well as teachers. 
Donors and legislators are eager to give to institutions which 
no man can buy; that is their reason for giving. But 
public confidence in such freedom is not so easy to secure. 
Men carry the notions of property and ownership from 
other fields into the college field; they make a gift into 
a bargain, and so they fail to understand. The college 
must explain itself, must make its friends, must make its 
friends and foes alike perceive that it is one in purpose; 
honest in dealings, seeking to free men from ignorance 
and self-interest, seeking to make for men knowledge and 
self-criticism. It has no other purpose in any part or 
fragment of its being. 

A harder relationship to understand is that of professors 
and propaganda. How shall men express opinions within 
the classroom or outside, and yet not make the college seem 
to be a partisan in public disputes. There are two very 
different ways in which it might be done. We might 
arrange that no professor should be a partisan on any 
public issue; he must remain a scholar, seeing the principles 
beneath the popular disputes, impartially making all sides 
clear, and yet not advocating any one of them. Or on the 
other hand, we might make up a college faculty of many 
advocates, at least one advocate for every important line 
of popular thought and impulse, trusting to each to push 
his cause as strongly as he can. In either case, the college 
as a whole would remain free and uncommitted. Which is 
the better plan ? I wonder if we need to choose between 
them. 

No one who loves a college can fail to feel the attraction 
of the former plan. We like to think of scholars as standing 
apart from common quarrels, as looking deeper into life 



94 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

than common men, as finding the principles that underlie 
all common controversies. And so they do, and ought to 
do. And yet they do not by such study escape men's 
disagreements; the superficial quarrels reappear down in 
the lower levels of our thought; scholars are not agreed 
regarding the issues of human life. They have their points 
of view, their attitudes of mind, their working theories, 
their own beliefs. Shall they be advocates of those beliefs? 
They cannot help it. But on the other hand, are there no 
limits to the forms their partisanship may take? I think 
there are. A man who advocates a view as if there were no 
other views, who finds the total truth in some mere frag- 
ment of an insight which has come to him, who sees and 
formulates no underlying principles beneath the strife of 
parties, is no proper college teacher. A college has a right 
to expect that every one who serves its cause, whatever 
else he do, shall keep its faith, its partial insight if you 
like, that truth is broader than a creed and deeper than 
the theories of any sect or class. 

Shall college teachers be advocates or critics? I do not 
think we are ready to choose as yet. We want both types 
and are not ready to let either go. Most of our men prefer 
the impartial role; some have the zeal of advocates. And 
if the scholars keep themselves alive to human situations, 
if partisans hold fast to academic faith, we need not 
interfere. We should not like to see our "ninety-three 
professors " declaring that all our acts are right — right 
beyond question; nor do we wish our scholars to retire 
to quiet places, reflecting sadly on the weaknesses of fellow 
men. One thing we know — whatever individual professors 
do or think, the college must be impartial; it must not be an 
advocate; it must urge no cause but its own, the cause of 
knowledge and self-criticism. 

There are, however, two or three remarks which may be 
made upon the issue just considered. 

Should we, in choosing teachers, take account of their 
opinions? If we are well enough acquainted with their 



THE FREEDOM OF THE COLLEGE 95 

work to pass on their appointments, we cannot well help 
knowing what they think. And yet we must not take 
account of it. We might, if we had found ourselves by 
blind unconscious preference appointing men of our own 
points of view, seek out opponents of ourselves to keep the 
balance. But on no other ground could we be justified in 
choosing a man because of his beliefs. 

May teachers be dismissed because they hold and ad- 
vocate this view or that? Such action would contravene 
the very spirit and purpose of a college. Professors must 
be good men, must study well, and teach successfully. 
If these requirements are met, no question can be raised 
regarding their opinions. The college has no fear of any 
opinions. It takes them all and judges them. If this be 
true, the tenure of the teacher is not that of one who is 
paid to work as he is told, who may be sent away if those 
who pay him do not like the work he does. His tenure is 
rather that of the judge who, by the very nature of the 
task assigned him, is placed beyond control or punishment 
by those on whom his judgment must be made. 

I think there is a case against the allowing of college 
presidents to play the role of public advocate. So far as 
teachers are concerned, safety is found in numbers. No 
one of them can claim to represent the college as a whole. 
Whatever one of them may say, a dozen of his fellows will 
be found to take another point of view. But presidents 
are wont to speak each for his college. Nothing about them 
is more obvious than just their singularity. And when a 
president takes his place in sect or party he takes the college 
with him as no professor can. I have no doubt that in the 
public mind one president, engaging in propaganda as a 
partisan, can do more harm in shaking confidence in aca- 
demic fairness and impartiality than could a hundred 
teachers if they should storm and rave in every sect and 
party that the country knows. And if it should appear 
that, on the whole, the college presidents are very much 
alike in mental attitude, are in most cases committed to 



96 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

a single point of view regarding human problems, I think 
that very rightly the colleges would fail of influence upon 
the public mind, would lose the public confidence on which 
the doing of their work depends. 



in 

How shall we win and keep that confidence? That is 
the urgent problem for us and for the people whom we 
serve. How shall we teach unless the people listen? How 
shall they listen unless they know that we can teach and 
that we will? 

Unless a people find, in colleges or elsewhere, some place 
of criticism, some place where truth is sought, where 
thought is free, there is no hope for freedom of the people. 

The college must teach, and, first of all, must make the 
people understand what teaching is. How shall we let 
them know that we are building knowledge for their use, 
that we are serving every interest that they have and yet 
are slaves to none of them, that we will listen to every 
thought they bring and yet will weigh and value them with 
thoughts of other men in mind ? 

There is no other way than this: to study and to teach. 
And teaching is the attempt to make men free. 

Physician, heal thyself! 




Ill 

STUDENT ACTIVITIES IN THE COLLEGE 

S I survey the program of yesterday afternoon and 
this morning my mind is caught by the figure of the 
cookery or bakeshop. A cook from foreign parts has 
been brought in to concoct for us some delicious dish, pastry, 
pudding, or pie. And those of us who precede him on the pro- 
gram are simply bringing out from the pantry the ingredients 
which he requires. Mr. Eliot came laden with culture, 
Mr. Thorndike with discipline; Mr. Hocking set forth the 
specific purpose, and to-day Mr. Stearns has presented 
athletics for mingling in the bowl. It is with much fear 
and trembling that I present my own bundle, the Student 
Activities. I am aware that they are regarded by many 
cooks of college theory as spoiling the flavor of the edu- 
cational food. Or at the best they are only a frosting 
for the cake, a sauce for the pudding, and I sadly fear that 
this imported cook may have sauces and frostings of his 
own for the sake of which he may reject with scorn the 
offering I have been commissioned to bring. 

But now as I make my contribution to the program, it 
seems to me that it should be done, not with apology and 
timid protestation, but rather with confidence, with the 
assured conviction that no cake or pudding can be worth 
the eating unless it have this last delicate touch of per- 
fection which my condiment will give. May I confess that 
until I found myself obliged to write this paper on Student 
Actitivies, I had not realized how important, how essential 
they are. Is it not true in general that one of the best 
ways of discovering that a cause is important, or a truth 
significant, is to make a speech about it? Usually one 

97 



98 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

makes a speech not because he chooses to do so, but be- 
cause he is invited to do so. And when the speech has to be 
prepared and delivered the sheer necessities of the case 
demand that one believe that what he says is worth saying, 
no matter what it may turn out to be. In order to make 
this speech at all I must believe that student activities have 
a place in the life of the college community, and as I seek 
to determine that place I have no doubt that it will seem 
more and more important and significant. 

I 

To begin, then, I am convinced, as I write this paper, 
that in any ideal college, student activities are of funda- 
mental importance and that any one who would cook up 
a college without them need hope to find little appreciation 
of his wares. I can say this with freedom and irrespon- 
sibility to-day because mine is not the task of selecting or 
compounding the elements. I have an article to sell and 
I will sing its praises long and loud. It is for the cook to 
decide whether or not he will have it in the dish and if he 
takes it in, to give it proper mingling with the other stuffs 
which other vendors have brought in. 

The name "student activities" is intended, I presume, 
to express a difference or contrast. The name marks them 
off from the studies, those elements of the college life which, 
by implication, are either not student affairs or not activi- 
ties. I fear that our teachers in the colleges do not like the 
implication. We do not like to have studies regarded as 
peculiarly belonging to the Faculty, nor, on the other hand, 
do we wish them degraded to the realm of the mere pas- 
sivities. And so the very name itself arouses antagonism. 
It suggests that here is a feature of the college life which does 
not mix very smoothly with the others. It is not a good 
label if one would recommend his wares to college teachers 
who are eagerly striving to tempt the intellectual appetities 
of the boys entrusted to their charge. 

If we include under the phrase "student activities apart 



STUDENT ACTIVITIES IN THE COLLEGE 99 

from athletics" such enterprises as debating, dramatics, 
music, newspapers, literary magazines, philanthropic and 
religious organizations, as well as social functions of various 
types, one may express a very common faculty point of 
view concerning them in the words, "The less said about 
them the better." And with that judgment properly 
interpreted, I am inclined to agree. But I should person- 
ally not intend to minimize the importance of such activi- 
ties. It is not a safe generalization to declare that phases 
of human life are important in direct ratio to the degree 
to which they are publicly talked about. It is rather 
assumed amongst us that many very elemental and signifi- 
cant features of our common life are not to be talked about 
at all — they are to be taken for granted, to be accepted as 
given in the very nature of things. And it is just this "given- 
ness," this inevitableness of "student activities'* which 
should first of all be recognized as we approach them. 
We choose to bring boys together into social groups in 
order that we may teach them, may train their minds, may 
furnish them with information. But it is an inevitable 
incident of such a process that the boys should find them- 
selves together and should at once engage in common 
activities which seem to them attractive and at least enter- 
taining. We keep them busy or try to do so five or six or 
seven hours a day; with due allowance for the separation 
of sleep, they have many more hours than these to spend 
together in enterprises of their own choosing. We did 
not bring them together for the sake of these activities, 
but from our bringing them together, these activities follow. 
They are, as it were, a necessary accident of the teaching 
process. Whether we will or not, there they are and there 
they will remain in some form or other so long as boys are 
brought together in the common life of a college campus. 
And yet, in the presence of these inevitable accidents 
of our central purpose many of our teachers grudgingly 
acknowledge their presence, but, resenting it, they say, 
"Let them alone, the less said about them the better." 



ioo THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

Now if this attitude were not born in resentment, I 
should find it very congenial. The conclusion which it 
states seems to me excellent, even though the reasoning 
which leads to it is atrocious. The truth is that we talk 
too much about student activities, meddle with them too 
much, and legislate about them too much. And I say 
this not because they are bad, but because they are too 
good to be spoiled by our clumsy interferences; not because 
I am opposed to them, but because I should like to see them 
freely develop and grow as the spontaneous activities of 
the boys whose growth and development is our chief con- 
cern. To tamper with them seems to me like tampering 
with one's complexion. In one sphere at least we are sure 
that the improvement of the general health gives better 
permanent results for the complexion than temporary 
tampering, however satisfying for the moment. My im- 
pression is that the same principle holds good in the beauti- 
fication of colleges; make them strong and healthy and the 
activities will take care of themselves. 



II 

But whether our ignoring of student activities be due to 
hatred or to love, there are times when even the most 
abstract teacher is startled into recognition of them. Last 
Sunday evening I heard the Dean of one of our great law 
schools tell about the work of his school. And almost his 
first remark was, "You will not find any 'activities' at the 
law school; we give a man enough to do for all the time he 
can give to activity." And with his words, there flashed 
across my mind the vision of a liberal college without 
outside activities. What would it be like to teach liberal 
studies to a group of students who should give all their 
time to their studies, whose work should be their play, 
whose time should be wholly at our command? I think 
I have still enough of the spirit of the teacher to thrill at 
that vision. But as I saw it and reflected on it, there came 



STUDENT ACTIVITIES IN THE COLLEGE 101 

to mind those terrible words of Newman in which he con- 
trasts the little we can do for the student with the much 
that he can do for himself. 

"I protest to you, Gentlemen, that if I had to choose 
between a so-called University, which dispensed with resi- 
dence and tutorial superintendence, and gave its degrees 
to any person who passed an examination in a wide range 
of subjects, and a University which had no professors or 
examinations at all, but merely brought a number of young 
men together for three or four years, and then sent them 
away as the University of Oxford is said to have done some 
sixty years since, if I were asked which of these two methods 
was the better discipline of the intellect, — mind, I do not 
say which is morally the better, for it is plain that compul- 
sory study must be a good and idleness an intolerable 
mischief, — but if I must determine which of the two courses 
was the more successful in training, molding, enlarging 
the mind, which sent out men the more fitted for their 
secular duties, which produced better public men, men of 
the world, men whose names would descend to posterity, 
I have no hesitation in giving the preference to that Uni- 
versity which did nothing, over that which exacted of its 
members an acquaintance with every science under the 
sun. 

"How is this to be explained? I suppose as follows: 
When a multitude of young men, keen, open-hearted, 
sympathetic, and observant, as young men are, come 
together and freely mix with each other, they are sure to 
learn one from another, even if there be no one to teach 
them; the conversation of all is a series of lectures to each, 
and they gain for themselves new ideas and views, fresh 
matter of thought, and distinct principles for judging and 
acting, day by day." 

Now with these words of Newman ringing in our ears, 
let us state and answer a fair question, "Would you, if you 
could, free an undergraduate college from its activities?" 
My own answer is flatly in the negative. I believe that 



102 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

whatever a liberal college may be with them, without them 
it would be a sorry place in which to live. And for this 
conclusion there are at least two reasons. First, I am 
convinced that the complete absorption of the student in 
his studies would not in most cases give the best kind of 
college training. Not only are we trying to give college 
boys acquaintance with a great body of knowledge; more 
important than this, they must also acquire understanding, 
interpretation of what they are learning, reconstruction of 
what they have known. And for this process there is need 
of leisure, of deliberation and contemplation, of a certain 
quiet waiting for sub-conscious processes to do their part. 
These results cannot be achieved merely by digging and 
grinding. In addition to the work there must be the 
leisure; the two must be combined if the fruits of culture 
and intelligence are to be reached. Again, if we view 
college life fairly, we dare not fail to take account of the 
constantly repeated statement of graduates that they count 
certain "activities" as having been of far greater educational 
value than the studies given and taken in the classroom. 
I am sure that this statement contains more of falsity than 
of truth. But there is a truth in it, and it behooves us to 
isolate it and look it squarely in the face. As I look back 
on my own experience of teaching and disciplining, I seem 
to see what these graduates mean. I see it most clearly 
when I try to single out from the long line of students some 
one group which shall stand forth as intellectually the best 
— best in college work and best in promise of future in- 
tellectual achievement. Much as I should like to do so, 
I cannot draw the line round my own favorite students 
in philosophy, nor the leaders in mathematics, nor those 
successful in biology; nor could I fairly award the palm 
to the Phi Beta Kappa men who have excelled in all their 
subjects. It seems to me that stronger than any other 
group, tougher in intellectual fiber, keener in intellectual 
interest, better equipped to battle with coming problems, 
are the college debaters — the boys who, apart from their 



STUDENT ACTIVITIES IN THE COLLEGE 103 

regular studies, band themselves together for intellectual 
controversy with each other and with their friends in other 
colleges. I am not concerned to argue here the pros and 
cons of intercollegiate debate. It has its defects as well 
as its virtues. But if it be true that in this activity many 
of our best minds find their most congenial occupation and 
are furthered in intellectual growth rather than hindered 
in it, here is a challenge which we cannot fail to meet in 
the administration of college life and studies. And in 
some measure, though in different forms, what is true of 
debating holds true of dramatics, of writing, of music, 
and the other activities. When boys form their clubs or 
"crowds" for the spontaneous, enthusiastic pursuit of some 
chosen ideal, they gain from it a power, a liveliness of in- 
terest which can never be gained where that spontaneity is 
lacking. 

But now I shall be asked: Would you substitute these 
activities for the studies — give up the classroom for the 
lounging room and the Union? Of course not. The very 
excellence of these activities is that fundamentally they 
are the fruits of the classroom. But the point is that by 
these fruits the work of the classroom shall be known. 
We need not forget that these activities are only accidental 
and that the real values lie in the studies and the teaching. 
But none the less it is true that these activities reveal to 
us, far better than any examinations can do, the success 
or failure of the classroom itself. They are, as it were, 
mirrors in which we can see ourselves and our work. If 
we want to know the effect of what we are doing in the 
classroom, let us look to see what the students are doing 
outside of it when they are free to follow their own desires. 
If they do not, on their own initiative, carry on activities 
springing out of their studies, then you may count on it 
that however well the tests are met the studies are of little 
value. Show me a college in which literature is taught 
but in which the boys do not band together to read and 
write and criticise, in which they do not yearn to be them- 



104 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

selves "literary." However well literature may be taught 
in that college it is not well learned. What would you say 
of the teaching of philosophy which did not send boys off 
into quarrelling, rending, puzzling groups, determined each 
to give to his fellows the solutions of the problems that 
have baffled human thinking? What will you say of the 
teaching of history, economics, or social science which ends 
in the passive appropriation of a book? Surely if it is 
vital, you will find the young men stimulated by it eagerly 
re-forming and re-shaping in idea the society about them 
and perhaps going out to do some work to bring their ideas 
to fulfilment. And if in these and other cases it does appear 
that the studies in the classroom have no outside effect, 
lead to no outside activities, what expectation can you 
have that they will lead to activity after the college days 
are done? If studies do not stimulate to spontaneous free 
outside activities, if they are merely the learning of lessons 
and giving them back, then the results of our training are 
pitifully small; we may send out good, well-meaning boys, 
who will do what they are told and refrain from doing 
anything else, but we shall not send out men of intellectual 
power and grip who are able to live for themselves the life 
which the intellect opens before them. 

in 

What, then, in a word, should be our attitude toward 
these activities? I think that, without officially looking 
at them, we should be forever watching them as the mariner 
watches his barometer when the waves are high. And we 
must see to it that the classroom dominates the activities, 
making them what they ought to be. And how is that to 
be done? Can it be done by legislating out of the college 
all activities not in harmony with the classroom? I fear 
that very little can be accomplished in that way. The only 
real way to dominate the activities is to dominate the men 
who are in them. In a college where the teacher masters 
the mind and imagination of the pupil, there will be little 



STUDENT ACTIVITIES IN THE COLLEGE 105 

trouble about harmful activities. If teachers are mere 
taskmasters, assigning lessons and seeing that they are done, 
they need not expect the boy to do them over again a second 
time just for the love of the task. When the cat's away 
the mice will play, and they very seldom play at calling 
the cat to come back so that they may be chased and 
terrified again. A college is a place where work should be 
and must be done, but a liberal college in which the student 
activities are simply reactions from the studies, ways of 
escape from the dreary grind — such an institution is not a 
college at all. If we do not succeed in making boys want to 
do the things which we deem worth doing, then we may be 
good drill masters, but we are not good teachers, and we 
have no proper place in a college of liberal culture. 

But I know that I shall be accused of talking in vague 
generalities and of missing the real point of the issue. 
Do not these activities interfere with the studies, I shall 
be asked; do they not take time and energy on which the 
teacher has a rightful claim ? Yes, they do. But there are 
many other things whose interference is more serious. As 
for that, one study, if it be successfully taught, interferes 
with other studies not so well taught. But in the give and 
take of a college life, a study should be able to take care of 
itself. The teacher has large power in his own hands; 
if he cannot exercise it then the fault belongs to him rather 
than to his situation. 

Teachers often tell me of their worries about the over- 
doing of student activities. And I know that they are 
overdone. But I have far more worry about the men who 
underdo them. The men I worry about are those who 
overdo the inactivities. What of the men who do no 
debating, no acting, no writing, no reading, no philanthropic 
services, no music? What have we done to them or failed 
to do to them in the classroom that they should be willing 
simply not to be in the hours in which they are free? What 
in the world do they do with themselves? So far as one 
can see they just dawdle. They are the men who play 



106 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

cards or pool, who talk about the teams, read the papers, 
walk the streets, watch the passers-by. These are the men 
for whom I feel responsibility, about whose fate I torture 
my soul with dreadful anticipations. Would you not 
rather have them engaged in activities? When we have 
found some way of saving these men from themselves, it 
will be time for us to deal with their brethren who are at 
least alive and whose very activity at times puts the class- 
room to shame. 

The one attitude toward student activities which seems 
to me deplorable is a kind of sullen hostility which one 
sometimes finds in earnest college teachers. They give one 
the impression of having been beaten in a fight, of feeling 
that the worse cause has prevailed over the better, of re- 
senting both their defeat and the unfairness of a conflict 
in which such a defeat is possible. Now the trouble with 
this attitude is that it is not sane, and further, that it 
places the teacher in an utterly false relation to his pupils. 
No teacher can ever afford to be beaten either by his pupils 
or by their friends. He must be master and that for the 
reason that he has in charge the fundamental interests upon 
which all values depend. For the sake of those interests 
he must dominate the boy both within the classroom and 
outside it, and whatever the difficulties, he may never 
admit himself beaten in the task. I am convinced that the 
teachers in any of the college communities which we know 
can make of those communities what they will. If they 
fail, the fault is not in the situation but in the men whose 
business it is to master it. 

IV 

I began this paper by accepting the principle concerning 
student activities, "The less said about them, the better." 
I think you will agree with me that I have been loyal to 
the principle. I have not tried to say anything but simply 
to define an attitude. 

And now I leave my parcel on the cook's table. Let him 
do with it as he will. 



PART III 
DISCUSSIONS IN EDUCATIONAL THEORY 

THE two papers here given are early adventures 
into the field of educational theory. The first 
paper was given at the general meeting of the 
Religious Education Association held at Brown University 
in March, 191 1. It expresses the conviction that no teach- 
ing of knowledge can be successful unless it is based upon 
a study of what knowledge is. It finds logical reflection 
upon the intellectual process to be essential to any proper 
understanding of that process as a teacher ought to under- 
stand it. 

The second paper was read at a meeting of the Associa- 
tion of Schools and Colleges of New England at Boston 
University on October 9, 1908. The paper maintains that if 
the logical distinction between form and content has signifi- 
cance for the description of thinking, then the theory of 
formal discipline has corresponding validity for the teacher of 
thinking. It is not necessary, if one seeks to justify this 
theory, that one appeal to a discarded and discredited 
psychology of the Faculties. Logic, modern as well as 
ancient, confirms the statement that the most important 
single judgment which can be made about the thinking 
process is that which singles out its form or method from its 
content. If this be true then formal discipline in some very 
real and important sense must be at the very heart of all 
intellectual training and development. 



107 



LOGIC IN THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM 

COLLEGE courses are roughly divided into two classes, 
(i) those which give training and (2) those which give 
information, which add to the sum of knowledge. 
My impression is that logic has kept its place in the curricu- 
lum as a member of the first group. The teacher of logic, 
it is commonly supposed, does not deal with any particular 
set of facts. He is willing to choose his material from any 
field of human knowledge. He may discuss such diverse 
statements as All men are mortal, All cats like fish, A straight 
line is the shortest distance between two points. But in 
dealing with these he is expected to give to his students 
a certain mental technique, a certain delicacy of intellectual 
touch, a strength of mental grasp, which will fit them for the 
work of thinking, wherever it may be carried on. Now it is 
not my intention to minimize the importance of the training 
value of logic. I would maintain, however, that this con- 
tribution to the aims of college education is far less im- 
portant than the information or, perhaps better, the insight 
which logic gives — its additions to the sum of valuable 
and significant knowledge. In support of this contention 
I must first attempt to state what the science is and then 
endeavor to tell what it has to give to the upbuilding of 
the undergraduate mind. 

In common with other ancient disciplines, logic has 
suffered many inroads and encroachments from the so-called 
modern sciences. The old boundary lines have been sadly 
broken by the New Psychology with its studies of mental 
procedure and development, by the New Mathematics in 
its analysis of necessary relationships, by the New Sociology 

108 



LOGIC IN THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM 109 

in its classification of the sciences and its general enthusiasm 
for whatever may be called social. But now face to face 
with these invaders we have a New Logic as well — a logic 
well able to give a good account of itself in the war of 
definitions. In popular opinion, logic has commonly been 
identified with the mere Art of the Syllogism. But this is 
simply because in schemes of popular education the syllogism 
has been singled out for its training value and the other 
more essential features of the science have been ignored or 
unknown. But logic is to-day a field of study defined by 
a clear-cut conception — a conception which at once gives 
unity to all its parts and marks ofF the whole from other 
sciences which are themselves sufficiently clear to admit 
of proper definition. Though the sciences have changed 
in content and procedure, logic is still the science of the 
sciences — that is, the science which studies its fellows. 
It is still the science of thinking, though thinking in the 
last few centuries has undergone radical transformation. 
The task of logic is to know the intellectual, the thinking 
activities of man. Just as the student of ethics takes the 
activities of willing and choosing — would collate them, 
describe, classify, explain, organize — in a word, know 
them — so in a corresponding sense does the logician en- 
deavor to know what thinking is and does and ought to 
be. Wherever a man is thinking there is material for us 
to examine. The physicist measures and explains his data; 
we will measure and explain the physicist. The biologist 
tabulates and generalizes his observations; we will tabulate 
and generalize about biologists. Sociology springs into 
being as a new intellectual movement; we will endeavor to 
understand that movement, to know what it is, whence 
it comes, whither it is bound. In a word, other men think 
about the world; we think about their thinking, and seek 
to know thought as they know the facts with which their 
thought deals. 

This conception of an external scrutiny of the sciences 
has never appealed very strongly to the scientists them- 



no THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

selves. My impression is that they have often felt toward 
logic as they are now feeling toward the agents of Mr. 
Carnegie — namely, that they know their own business 
better than any outsider can know it, and that it would 
be better if they were left alone to the guidance of their 
own judgment. It may perhaps clear the issue if I insist, 
just as Mr. Pritchett does, that our aim is not to dictate 
what the scientist shall do but simply to know what he is 
doing. On the other hand, it must be insisted that the 
logician hopes to understand the work of the scientist in 
a way and to a degree which is quite impossible to the 
scientist himself so long as he remains devoted to his own 
facts and his own point of view. We do not know his facts 
but we do intend to know him, his aim, his problem, his 
method, his concepts, his results. For the sake of clearness, 
however, let me indicate the kind of questions which we 
ask concerning him. 

Our first and fundamental question is, "What are men 
seeking as they think?" Now, wherever thinking is found, 
whether on the street, in the mill, in the laboratory, in the 
study, that question always receives one answer. Think- 
ing seeks to attain Truth and to avoid Error. To define 
these terms then, to understand the common purpose of 
all men in their intellectual strivings, to find the common 
element of which all thought activities are simply modi- 
fications, that is our first task — the discovery of the 
fundamental terms, the unit of explanation — the first 
task of every scientist in dealing with his facts. Again we 
find that the intellectual inquiry divides itself into separate 
fields, each dealing with a separate group of facts. The 
historian is dealing with individual sequences and co- 
existences, the physicist with quantitative changes, the 
biologist with living forms, the psychologist with conscious 
processes, the economist with prices and exchanges. And 
in each case it appears that the nature of the inquiry is 
molded and shaped by the nature of the material con- 
sidered. Here then is another set of questions. What are 



LOGIC IN THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM in 

the differences in aim, the differences in method, the differ- 
ences in concepts employed, which mark off these investi- 
gations from one another? Or again, since these separate 
investigations have the common aim of Truth to bind them 
together in spite of their differences, what are their relations 
of significance for one another and for the whole? In a 
word, we know the whole field of human knowledge not in 
all its contents, but in its form, with its likenesses and 
differences, its common problems and its separate problems, 
its general methods and its special procedures, its funda- 
mental concepts and the modifications of these in special 
fields. We do not, as is sometimes supposed, claim to know 
all that is known, but we do intend to know all knowing 
in exactly the same degree that the biologist can know all 
life and the physicist know all matter. 

Now it is a commonplace of modern logical theory that 
in spite of their membership in a common family, the 
children of Truth have very fundamental differences of 
presupposition, of problem, and of method. For one group 
of investigations the chosen task is the formulation of facts 
in terms of quantity and measurement. For another, all 
comparisons are those of quality, the likenesses and differ- 
ences of things. In the mechanical sciences the principle 
of causation is the final term of explanation, while in 
biological fields the notion of function seems far more 
fundamental and significant. In the studies of conscious- 
ness neither cause nor function seems adequate and both 
give way before the concept of value as the final term of 
human experience. Thus we find the sciences, each with 
its own distinct problem, each dominated by its own pre- 
suppositions — Sciences of Number and Quantity, of 
Quality, of Cause and Effect, of Function, of Value — 
these as we find them in our studies and in our curriculum 
stand apart as separate enterprises of the human spirit, 
each commanding the loyalty and interest of its followers. 
It is this situation which calls for the organizing activity 
of the student of logic. If we would know our world at all, 



ii2 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

if we would understand our own intellectual experiences, 
these separate groups of judgments must be understood in 
relation to each other and to the whole. Can the same 
fact be explained in terms of Quantity and Quality, of Cause 
and of Function, in terms of Existence and of Value, and if 
so, how do these different explanations bear upon each 
other? Here is a world of apparent discrepancies and 
contradictions which must be solved if we are to understand 
our own thoughts. It is in no spirit of vainglorious boast- 
ing that the student of logic approaches his task. 

One further conclusion of logical theory must here be 
noted, viz., that you can never get unified knowledge by 
simply adding together these separate contributions of the 
separate sciences. Departments of knowledge which have 
different problems, different methods, different presup- 
positions, cannot be thrown together as bricks upon bricks. 
Theirs is rather the organic relation in which no part is 
properly understood except in the light of the whole and yet 
in which every part performs a function radically different 
from every other. The history of human thinking is check- 
ered with the controversies which have arisen from the 
failure to perceive this relationship. "Are facts describable 
in terms of quantity? Then the notions of quality must 
be thrown aside." "Is the life of man genetically derived 
from lower forms. Then it has no value higher than that 
of those forms." "Is the human will causally determined? 
Then it is not free." "Is the world to be conceived as 
matter in motion? Then it cannot be known as the ex- 
pression of a divine spirit." These are misunderstandings 
and misapprehensions, every one of which has come from 
lack of knowledge of intellectual relationships. To give a 
way of escape from these misunderstandings is some part 
of the task of logic. 

If now we turn to the conception of Education, the place 
of logic in the general scheme is not hard to determine. 
It is, I presume, the function of intellectual education to 
give to a student a genuine and intimate understanding of 



LOGIC IN THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM 113 

the intellectual life of his people, and to fit him to play his 
proper part in the activities of that life. It is the pre- 
supposition of every institution of learning that education 
in this sense is good preparation for living as a man ought 
to live. A man is better, we believe, for knowing what his 
fellows have thought and are thinking, and for being able 
to do some thinking for himself. 

Now on this presumption what is the place of logic in 
the curriculum? And especially, how can logic contribute 
to the moral and religious values of the life of the student ? 
There are two lines of answer which I should like to suggest. 

In the first place, the most striking weakness of the 
curriculum of the American college to-day is that it is a 
thing of shreds and patches with little pretension to any 
unity of design or purpose. Under the wide elective system, 
a student is given opportunity to devote himself to any or 
all of a great multitude of intellectual inquiries, each with 
its own special task, each with its own special point of view. 
How is he to know the significance of these studies for each 
other, for thought as a whole, or for life as a whole? It is 
the pride and boast of each scientist that he does not depart 
from his own problem nor from his own method. Who 
then is to give to the student the bearings of that method 
and that problem? That is a question which still awaits 
an answer. But in these latter days certain measures of 
improvement have been attempted. A number of colleges 
have insisted- that a student shall work for a little 
while in each of the great branches of learning, and 
they are beginning to require that he study thor- 
oughly in at least one department of knowledge. But this 
is no genuine solution of the problem. Let me ask — If you 
add together a little Mathematics, a little Literature, a 
little each of History, Physics, Chemistry, Economics, 
Social Science, International Law, and Art, what do you 
get? You certainly get a great deal of something, but what 
is it? In its parts it is knowledge, because within the 
parts it is organized, but as a whole it is not knowledge, 



H4 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

for the different parts are not organized, but are simply 
thrown together. The boy who gets this education knows 
a great many things but he does not know the world, nor 
does he in any real sense know the intellectual life either of 
himself or of his fellows. If logic could only succeed in 
preventing this piling together of Quantities, Qualities, 
Functions, and Values into one great heap; if, as the end 
of a student's college life approaches, it could help him 
to single out these separate elements, to arrange, relate and 
unify them, in a word, to understand them, its work would 
be worth while. If this could be done the college would 
send forth fewer hodge-podge dilettantes, fewer uneducated 
specialists. It would give us more men of genuine culture. 
But there is another contribution of logic which is of even 
more immediate value to the interests of morals and of 
religion. I can simply state it here without stopping to 
explain. Morals and religion have always construed life 
in terms of Value. In the last three or four centuries, 
however, the physical and natural sciences have thrust 
upon the human consciousness the other concepts, especially 
those of Quantity, Causation and Function. Now the 
development of these sciences has been so marvelous, their 
achievements so great, that by mere fatigue of human 
attention, by mere distraction of interest, the Value 
conceptions have been obscured, neglected, and in many 
cases even lost. Here is a situation with which every 
college faculty is called upon to deal. No college has a 
right to-day to send forth boys into the activities of human 
living without giving them a clear understanding of what 
the Value conceptions are and how they differ from the 
notions of Cause and Function which dominate the fields 
of Physics and Biology. If a boy has not been made to 
see that human life demands a type of explanation different 
from those given to matter, to plant, and to animal, then 
the college has not done its work, and the boy is not intel- 
lectually prepared for the moral situations which lie before 
him. 



LOGIC IN THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM 115 

If now we sum up our conclusions, I think we may say 
that logic has three contributions to make to the moral 
and religious welfare of the college student. 

In the first place, it has undoubted training value which 
for purposes of this discussion need only be mentioned. 

Secondly, by its studies of the relations of the sciences 
to each other and to the total work of thinking, it makes 
possible some intelligible formulation of that world-wide 
view which underlies every system of religious belief. It 
frees us from the limitations of special problems, special 
methods, special fields. It opens up to us the unitary life 
of the human spirit. This is its contribution to religion. 

And thirdly, it makes clear the peculiar and character- 
istic concepts of Value in terms of which we may best 
understand this human life of ours. In this it brings clear- 
ness and order into the field of morals. 

I fear that I have made large claims for the significance 
of logic. But it is hard to see how, in an institution de- 
voted to thinking, one could claim less for the science which 
studies thinking itself. I may also plead that this is not the 
first time that the maxim "Know thyself" has been given 
an important place in a scheme of liberal education. 



II 

IS MENTAL TRAINING A MYTH 

I AM sure that you have all heard the most recent theory 
of classical scholarship with regard to the real or mythical 
character of Homer. It is, you remember, that Homer is 
a myth, that the Iliad was not written by him, but by another 
man of the same name. It is in very much the same spirit, 
I fear, and with very much the same result, that I enter 
upon the attempt to provoke in your minds a discussion of 
the theory of mental training or formal discipline. My 
thesis, in a word, is this: "The theory of mental training, 
the old presupposition of our educational systems, is false, 
but its lineal descendant of the present generation is true, 
and that descendant rightly bears the name of its reverend 
ancestor." 

It is rather a pleasant task for a layman to do what he 
can in defense of so old and worthy a tradition as that of 
mental training, for whether true or false, it has done much 
for the theory and practise of our education. It was formu- 
lated not later than the Greeks, it was taught throughout 
the entire classic tradition, it has been the common dogma 
of educational science until the present day, it is advocated 
by college presidents and Committees of Ten; if we accept 
their own words, it is practised by many of those who de- 
clare themselves its enemies. In a word, it is a respectable 
old theory, perhaps even a sacred one; it has played its part, 
and done its work well; it is worthy of such gratitude as 
we may care to offer. So, at least, it appears to the lay 
mind, for I have observed that however eager we may be 
to press on to the discovery of new truths and the destruc- 
tion of old dogmas in our own academic work, most of us 

116 



IS MENTAL TRAINING A MYTH 117 

are impatient and distressed when the workers in other fields 
direct their attacks upon those ancient structures in which 
we have housed our uncritical beliefs and prejudices. As 
a layman, then, speaking to students and practitioners of 
educational theory, may I come before you to stir up dis- 
cussion by saying a good word for the old theory of formal 
discipline, and if it be no longer among us to receive the 
praise, then let the praise fall at the door of that member 
of the family who to-day lays rightful claim to the ancestral 
place among educational beliefs. 

As one reads over the literature of the discussion, the 
most satisfactory statements of the position are found in 
the illustrations rather than in the technical definitions. 
This may, of course, be due to the layness of one's own 
mind, but to the lay mind, at least, it indicates that the 
discussion is still in its preliminary stages. The fact is 
that the critics of the theory are applying in the educa- 
tional field a psychological point of view which has not yet, 
even in its own field, been brought to definiteness and 
clearness; and, on the other hand, the theory of mental 
training, formulated centuries ago, has for the most part 
received expression from men not cognizant of, or, at least, 
directly concerned with, the recent changes in psychological 
science — from college presidents, for example, and from 
other men whose business it is to represent before the public 
the aims and achievements of school and college. Now, 
it is possible, of course, that the new view is the true one, 
and that the college presidents quite unintentionally are 
misleading their hearers. It may be, for example, that 
President Woodrow Wilson is mistaken when he says: 
"We speak of the 'disciplinary' studies . . . having in 
our thought the mathematics of arithmetic, elementary 
algebra, and geometry, the Greek-Latin texts and grammars, 
the elements of English and of French or German. . . . 
The mind takes fiber, facility, strength, adaptability, 
certainty of touch from handling them, when the teacher 
knows his art and their power. The college . . . should 



n8 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

give . . . elasticity of faculty and breadth of vision, so 
that they shall have a surplus of mind to expend. . . ." So, 
too, President Timothy Dwight of Yale University may 
have been wrong when he said of college education, "Such 
an education is the best means of developing thought 
power in a young man, and making him a thinking man of 
cultured mind." It must be admitted that the statements 
have something of the ring of the discredited and outworn 
psychology of faculties rather than of that functional science 
which is claiming the field to-day. But, personally, I am 
of the opinion that the difficulty is only one of words. I 
am inclined to think that the college presidents do know 
what they are driving at, even though, strange as it may 
seem, they are not able to express it very happily. And 
if this be so, we may well take upon ourselves the benevolent 
task of putting words into their mouths. And, at the 
same time, we may suggest to their critics that 
they, too, have as yet failed to reach a clearness of state- 
ment which would justify the throwing of stones at the 
windows of their predecessors and present rulers. In a 
word, what a lay mind like my own would like to do is to 
reduce the two conflicting theories to the terms of a com- 
mon point of view so that, face to face and on the same 
footing, we may fairly determine to which of them belongs 
the victory in the conflict which they are waging. 

To begin, then, with illustrations, we are told that the 
theory of mental training is a "gymnastic" theory of mind. 
It is a notion drawn from analogy with the body. Just as 
the arm may, by exercise, develop strength which may then 
be used for many purposes, such as throwing a ball, wielding 
a pen, holding a plow, so the mind and its various faculties 
may, by proper training, be increased in power, which may 
then be expended wherever demand may call. For example, 
by exercising the memory in nonsense syllables or Latin 
verse, one may improve the memorizing power in general; 
by training the observation in the laboratory, one may so 
develop the capacity for sense-discrimination that in every 



IS MENTAL TRAINING A MYTH 119 

field perception will be keener and more exact. In short, 
as the mind has many faculties, each doing its own part 
of the mental toil, each of these may be strengthened 
through exercise, and by a proper course of study all of them 
may be so developed that, to quote Chancellor MacCracken, 
the student "will possess a better disciplined mind for 
whatever work of life he may turn his attention to." 

Now, against this theory, two lines of argument have 
been advanced : the first theoretical, a matter of definition, 
and the second experimental, a matter of fact. The argu- 
ment from definition has challenged the description of the 
mind contained in the theory of mental training as given 
above. It has criticized the division of the mind into 
faculties, and has shown that division to be absurd. Upon 
that point there can be no further question, nor need there 
be, so far as the notion of formal discipline is concerned. 
It has also challenged the analogy between mind and body 
implied in the notions of exercise, practise, gymnastic 
training, and has raised the query whether the mind is 
really the sort of thing that can be trained and practised. 
This question we must keep before us as essential to the 
controversy. On the side of fact, Professor William James, 
whose hand has gone early and deep into most of the stir- 
rings of the philosophical caldron during the last twenty- 
five years, has here, too, had a leading part in the melting 
down of conventional and uncritical dogma. Experi- 
menting upon memory processes, he seemed to find little 
improvement in grasp of one kind of material as a result 
of memorizing another, and so he has stated the general 
question, How far is it experimentally true that exercise in 
one sort of mental activity gives facility and power in other 
activities more or less closely akin to the first? 

With regard to the question of fact much valuable ex- 
perimentation has been carried on in the psychological 
laboratories and the schools during the progress of the 
discussion. The question being how far one activity of the 
mind is influenced by the carrying on of other activities, 



120 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

the answers might a priori be expected to range anywhere 
from the extreme view of formal discipline on the one hand 
to the equally extreme statement of psychological atomism 
on the other. According to the former, the mind may, 
by the exercise of certain general powers, assume immediate 
and complete command over great masses of concrete 
functions. According to the latter, each activity of the 
mind is so separate and independent that only by its own 
exercise with all its distinctive peculiarities and limitations 
can it be improved in efficiency and ease. The former 
view has been so often made ridiculous by the overstate- 
ment of its opponents that I think one may be pardoned 
for retaliation when opportunity presents itself. 

What will you say of a theory that the training of the 
mind is so specific that each particular act gives facility 
only for the performing again of that same act just as it 
was before? Think of learning to drive a nail with a yellow 
hammer, and then realize your helplessness if, in time of 
need, you should borrow your neighbor's hammer and find 
it painted red. Nay, further think of learning to use a 
hammer at all if at each stroke the nail has gone further 
into the wood, and the sun has gone lower in the sky, and 
the temperature of your body has risen from the exercise, 
and, in fact, everything on earth and under the earth has 
changed so far as to give to each stroke a new particularity 
all its own, and thus has cut it off from all possibility of 
influence upon or influence from its fellows. No one, so far 
as I know, maintains a theory such as this but, on the 
other hand, no one, so far as I know, maintains a theory 
of the exercise of the mind in general as giving immediate 
control of every concrete situation in life. The truth lies 
somewhere between the two, and just where it lies is matter 
of fact to be determined by factual investigation so far as 
may be. 

The results of the experimental inquiries thus far made have 
received their latest summarization in the papers of Pro- 
fessors Angell, Pillsbury, and Judd. According to these 



IS MENTAL TRAINING A MYTH 121 

writers, one may say that in practically all the functions 
open to statistical investigation the influence of practise in 
one function upon certain others has been established to a 
degree worthy of the attention of the student of education. 
For example, with regard to that memory problem to which 
Professor James first called attention, Professor Pillsbury 
declares that the investigations seem to leave little doubt 
that rote memory can be improved by practise, and that 
the same is true of logical memory so far as can be de- 
termined. Professor Judd, after an account of other in- 
quiries, sums up the situation by the statement, "These 
facts certainly justify the statement that mental functions 
are interrelated and interdependent in the most manifold 
ways. Sometimes the training of an attitude aids the 
positive development of certain other attitudes. Some- 
times, one function interferes with other functions. Above 
all stands the fact that every new experience changes the 
individual's capacity for new experiences." If these are 
fair summaries of the results of the investigations, then I 
think one may safely say that, as yet, the theory of formal 
discipline is not experimentally disproven. 

In the field of definition the first task of those who take 
the new point of view is that of formulating a principle 
other than that of formal discipline in which the facts thus 
far established shall be properly recognized. Almost with- 
out exception this has been accomplished by some variation 
of the formula of Professor Thorndike, "The answer which 
I shall try to defend is that a change in one function alters 
any other only in so far as the two functions have as factors 
identical elements." But if one ask for the precise meaning 
of this term "identical" or "common elements," it must be 
said frankly that at this point little seems to have been 
accomplished. Professor Thorndike tells us that he means 
by identical elements "mental processes which have the 
same cell action in the brain as their physical correlate." 
But this definition can hardly be of immediate service to 
the student of education, and apart from this attempt at 



122 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

definition we are given only lists of common elements such 
as methods, habits of attention, ideals, attitudes of will, 
and the like, all of which are significant, but no one of which 
gives us an answer to the question, "What do we mean by 
the 'common element'?" as employed in the theory in 
question. The simple fact is that at this point the new 
theory has not yet reached the stage of clear formulation; 
it is still in process of development. In short, while psycho- 
logical experiment and theory have established as a good 
tentative hypothesis this notion of the common element, 
experiment has not yet proceeded far enough to carry it 
beyond the hypothetical stage, nor has the formulation been 
made so clear and definite as to furnish a secure basis for 
attack on other theories which have some measure of 
scientific respectability. 

In this situation, it is the primary purpose of this paper 
to urge that, in our search for the "common element," we 
turn from the field of psychology into that of another em- 
pirical science which deals with consciousness, — I mean 
the science of logic. And, in justification of this procedure, 
may I suggest that it was from the point of view of logic, 
and not of psychology, that the doctrine of formal discipline 
was first stated and maintained? The very term, formal 
discipline, gives evidence of its origin, indicating a point of 
view far removed from that of the psychologist, and it may 
be that the theory first formulated by logic still retains a 
significance from the standpoint of that science. At any 
rate, I venture to offer as a subject for this evening's dis- 
cussion the following thesis: "For the empirical science of 
logic the term form, as applied to our intellectual processes, 
indicates a common element, or a series of common ele- 
ments, in those processes, which makes the theory of formal 
discipline at least intelligible and apparently tenable as a 
doctrine of intellectual training." In other words, formal 
training is discipline in certain discoverable forms of in- 
tellectual activity. It does not imply the bad psychology 
of the faculties; it does imply the thoroughly sound and 



IS MENTAL TRAINING A MYTH 123 

respectable distinction of form and content which is made 
by the logician. 

Now, I know that thus to flaunt logic in the face of the 
psychologist and his disciples is, in these days, to invite 
ridicule and gentle intolerance from one's adversaries. 
Year after year I have the pleasure of seeing a definition 
of the philosophical sciences frame itself in the minds of 
an elementary class as they acquire familiarity with current 
literature of the type represented by Professor Karl Pearson. 
And the definition is this: "Originally all knowledge was 
a confused mass of popular and uncritical opinions; from 
this mass there have emerged separate fragments which 
have reached clearness of expression and accuracy of method; 
these are the sciences; that which is still left of the original 
chaos is philosophy." Such a definition coming from un- 
critical minds is thoroughly typical of a great amount of 
the superficial thinking of the time. My impression is that 
it has found a foothold even within the field of education, 
for even here I have seen the term philosophical applied to 
a method as a term of reproach for lack of scientific accuracy. 
But it is the secondary thesis of this paper to insist that for 
the student of education the philosophical sciences, es- 
pecially those of logic, ethics, and esthetics, are essential. 
With a brave heart, therefore, as the advocate of a cause, 
I venture to ask you to seek in the field of logic those com- 
mon elements of intellectual process which the logician 
calls its forms. 

The distinction between form and content on which the 
science of logic rests is not an easy one to express. Since 
the doctrine of formal discipline was first stated the con- 
cept of form has been shaped and reshaped by many a 
generation of thinkers, and as this has been done, logic has 
gone through transformations quite as radical as that of 
psychology from its earlier to its later stage. Even now 
the presuppositions of the science are being questioned and 
tested by the school of Pragmatists, and the end of that 
controversy is not yet. But meanwhile, the distinction of 



124 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

form and content seems to me to remain as an essential 
concept which through long examination has been brought 
to a relatively high degree of definiteness and usefulness. 

The distinction is that of material to be arranged (the con- 
tent) and the way in which it is arranged (the form). This 
does not mean, of course, that first we have material which 
has no form, no arrangement, and thereupon we take it 
and put it into relationships. It means, rather, that in 
every actual object of experience we can and must for 
purposes of description separate in thought the two ele- 
ments of the content and the form. Thus if I place these 
pieces of paper in an ordered arrangement and number 
them i, 2, 3, 4, 5, — then the papers are for me a certain 
content, a material, while the numerical order is the form 
in which I now place them. Or, again, if a man who is 
building a boat takes wood and nails, paint and pitch, 
these are for him the materials, the content, to be used; 
while, on the other hand, the fitting and joining of the parts, 
the designing, the building, the finishing, all these are 
processes of giving to the material a form, that structure 
and model after which the builder of the boat must seek. 
Or, again, if I examine a tree I find not only leaf and branch 
and trunk, each with its own constituent parts, but each 
of these stands in definite relations to all the others; and, 
further, as the process of growth goes on, not only is there 
addition of new material and casting ofF of old, but there 
are also those transformations of inner and external re- 
lationship which are the form, the very manner of its living. 

Now, it is in this sense of the term that the student of 
logic examining our mental activities attempts a classi- 
fication of their formal elements, their similarities of pro- 
cedure. His purpose is to arrange them in a diverging 
series leading from the most fundamental and universal 
down through its subforms, and the sub-forms of these, 
which step by step become less extensive in their scope, 
until we approach as near as we may to the particular modes 
of concrete thinking, with all their peculiarities and unique- 



IS ME NT J L TRAINING A MTTH 125 

nesses. The results of this attempt are to be found in those 
lists of categories which from Aristotle down have held a 
central place among the achievements of the logicians. It 
is not my purpose at this time to suggest a list of the cate- 
gories, but I should like to mention two or three of them 
for the sake of giving point to the thesis that formal dis- 
cipline is the practise of the mind in certain forms or methods 
of thinking which are "common elements" in wide ranges of 
our experience. 

The most fundamental of the categories is that which 
has long been expressed as the Law of Contradiction, but is 
now usually stated in terms of system, coherence, organiza- 
tion. It is a generalization of the observed fact that the 
mind, wherever and however it thinks, is always striving 
after order, is seeking to make systematic a content which 
has been thus far relatively chaotic and incoherent. It is 
a statement of the fact that you and I, as our daily life 
goes on, are thinking multitudes of thoughts which, upon 
examination, turn out to be contradictory of each other, 
and which, therefore, must be so modified that they may 
dwell together in the same thought-system. It is an 
expression of the principle that our various judgments and 
descriptions of the world are so related and interrelated 
that no one of them can be regarded as finally true until 
it has been shown to be consistent with every other judg- 
ment of fact made by the same mind about the same world. 
From this point of view, then, the one fundamental form 
of mental activity, the one "common element" in all mental 
procedure is the making of judgments consistent with one 
another, the constructing of a system of judgments within 
which each of them may find a proper place. In a word, 
it is the eradication of inconsistency, the establishing of 
order. 

An excellent illustration of this demand for formal unity 
was furnished me in my own experience during the past 
summer. Sitting day by day looking across Long Island 
Sound from a point on the Connecticut shore, I had in some 



126 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

way or other gotten the notion that my gaze was directed 
toward the north; from this it followed as a matter of direct 
inference that Providence lay on my right hand and New 
York on my left. It is true that the notion also required 
the revision of certain other ideas about the rising of the 
sun and the going down of the same, but I have not, as a 
matter of fact, had much interest in the rising of the sun, 
nor, so far as points of the compass are concerned, in its 
setting either. And so these obvious difficulties failed to 
bring my imagination into line with the descriptions which 
I can remember as given in my old school geography. 
When, however, it became necessary for me to start for 
Providence, other considerations appeared. Going to the 
station as I did, facing away from the water, I fully intended 
to take a train toward the left, but fortunately, station- 
master and brakemen intervened and quite contrary to 
my own imagining I was led and carried to the city and the 
college of my search. But not even here were my troubles 
ended, for during the four different journeys which I have 
taken along the line during the summer I have spent hours, 
I am sure, in trying to determine as a matter of imagination, 
on which side of the line the station house at New London 
lies, whether on your right or your left hand as you approach 
it from New Haven. The shock of finding it where it ought 
not to be gives one a feeling of turned-roundness that no 
one, I think, would willingly encounter. It is the shock 
of the failure of one's thinking. It means that one has not 
succeeded in bringing one's mental content into order. 
The judgment "the station will appear on the left" and 
the perceptual experience "there it is on the right" are 
left facing each other in such flat and blank contradiction 
that one feels either that he is a fool, or that, with Alice, 
he has wandered through the looking-glass to the region 
where the laws of logic no longer apply. 

If now it be asked what are some of the sub-forms, the 
less fundamental modes of relating contents which the 
mind employs, it should be noted that one of them has been 



IS MENTAL TRAINING A MYTH 127 

already given — the form of space — of position, direction, 
and distance. The space relations do not apply to all the 
objects of our experience, nor do they exhaust all the re- 
lationships of those objects to which they do apply, but 
they are none the less among the most significant of the 
methods which the mind uses in its work. Other forms 
whose importance for our thinking are equally obvious are 
the establishing of causal relationships, which may be 
carried on throughout the entire field of natural phenomena, 
the category of likeness and difference which finds expres- 
sion wherever the activities of comparison and discrimination 
appear. Somewhat different in type are the activities of 
representation in terms of written and spoken language, 
including the language of number upon which our sciences 
depend for complexity and breadth of view, as well as for 
accuracy of statement. These activities of comparing 
and discriminating, of establishing causal and spatial 
relations, of representing our sensuous content in the various 
symbolisms of language, all these are typical instances of 
the mind's activity as it constructs and systematizes its 
world. As such, each of them gives us a certain common 
element of "form," which will be found in wide ranges of 
mental activity; each of them may be developed and 
trained as a distinctive mode of thinking. If now we may 
state the doctrine of formal discipline in the terms which we 
have tried to define, it would run somewhat as follows: 
It is one of the tasks of education to so train the mind 
that it may do well the work of thinking. In order to 
accomplish this, it must select those kinds of mental activity 
which seem most fundamental and important for the life 
of the student. It must then make such selection of studies 
and must provide such a teacher that the student practised 
in these forms of thinking shall be made ready to use them 
as well as possible in the new situations which are his 
opportunities for achievement. In explanation of this 
statement, I should like to offer a few words of interpre- 
tation and restriction. 



128 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

It has been said that formal discipline sets only one of the 
tasks of the educator for the reason that, obviously, the 
training of the mind in this sense is not all of education. 
There must be teaching of the will and of the emotions, as 
well as the merely mental processes. Quite as important, 
too, is the task of furnishing the mind with proper content, 
of giving it acquaintance with the world, of supplying it with 
facts, with interests, of giving it something to think about. 
It is a valid criticism of much of our moral teaching in the 
past that we have too often simply laid down the moral 
laws, or forms, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor," and have 
left our pupils in such ignorance, both of themselves and 
their neighbors, that their morality has expended itself in 
idle sentiment or in blundering stupidity. So, too, with 
regard to intellectual training. It seems to me that the 
wave of criticism against formal training as such is simply 
the result of that great inrush of new thought material 
from the natural sciences which has made us despise the 
thinking of those who, in an earlier time, had little of in- 
formation upon which to employ their forming activities. 
But none the less, the formal side is essential, and it becomes 
more and more essential according as greater masses of 
material are thrust upon us to be rescued from incoherence 
and chaos. 

Again, if the question be raised "What are the best studies 
for the training of the mind; ought we to study the classics 
or the sciences, fine arts or engineering?" I fear that I have 
no answer ready. I am persuaded, however, that far more 
important than the subject is the mind of the teacher. 
The one sure way to learn good thinking is to come into 
contact with a mind which thinks well and to feel its in- 
fluence. In the game of thinking, as in the games of the 
athletic field, one learns best by practise in fast company. 
And it is not, in my opinion, necessary, as is sometimes 
suggested, that the method of the teacher should find 
expression in conscious ideals which may be communicated 
as guiding principles to the student. Knowledge of the 



IS MENTAL TRAINING A MYTH 129 

forms of logic is, alas, no guarantee of excellence in their 
use, just as acquaintance with the symbolism of mathe- 
matics is not always conjoined with accuracy and precision 
in the conduct of life. 

With regard to the experimental inquiries into the prob- 
lem in hand, it should be said that from the point of view 
here taken it does not follow that practise in a form of think- 
ing in one set of contents must give at once equal facility in 
the same sort of thinking in another field. It does not fol- 
low that the college teacher or college graduate is fully 
equipped, in virtue of his training, to build a ship, manage 
a caucus, teach a school, or rule a home. In these activities, 
as well as in all others in which men engage, it is necessary 
that the mind be well stored in addition to being well trained. 
For the carrying on of any pursuit, we need not only talent, 
native or acquired, but also information, interest, practise,, 
before the work can be successfully done. Exercise in one 1 
function should not be expected, therefore, to give equal 
facility in the carrying on of another. Obviously it does 
not, and the degree of the difficulty of transfer is determined, 
not only by identity or differences in the formal elements, 
but also by differences and similarities in the contents as 
well. That such a position is in accordance with the 
results of investigations thus far made will not, I think, 
be denied. 

It is often asked, when words are not used in the senses 
which we have given them, "But are not the forms of think- 
ing merely contents after all; does not the distinction of form 
and content break down, therefore, into the description of 
mental processes in terms of that which they contain?" 
To this we may answer, "Yes, the forms of thinking are 
mental contents in at least two legitimate senses: first, in 
that they are within the mind, are elements of the mental 
process; and, second, in that they can be stated in terms of 
principles and appear as fully formed judgments or ideals, 
as, for example, in the causal law, 'Given conditions are 
always followed by the same result.' ' But neither of these 



i 3 o THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

uses of the term content is that which we have employed; 
ours is the abstract resolution of every intellectual process 
into its material and its form, and the double or triple use 
of the term content should not be allowed to plunge us into 
ambiguity. 

The one word which sums up the theory of formal dis- 
cipline is method, or, rather, methods. It is the theory that 
the mind can be trained to do well certain kinds of work, 
to follow successfully certain methods of procedure. It is, 
I think, what Mr. Thorndike, in spite of his hostility to the 
theory, has in mind when, summing up the results of his 
own work, he says: "The chief duty of serious students of 
the theory of education to-day is to form the habit of in- 
ductive study and learn the logic of statistics. Long after 
every statement in this book has been superseded by a 
truer one the method which it tries to illustrate will still be 
profitable, and the ideals of accuracy and honesty in statis- 
tical procedure by which I hope it has been guided will 
still be honored." 

And, finally, may I insist that the doctrine of formal 
discipline, as so stated, has no connection whatever with 
the psychology of faculties. If there is one notion which 
would break down the conception of a system of formal 
modes of procedure, it is that of the mind as broken up into 
the separate minds of reasoning, observation, imagination, 
memory, and the rest. The advocates of formal discipline 
may blithely join forces with their opponents in consigning 
to oblivion a dogma which has perished from the earth and 
has left behind no one to perpetuate its name. 

And so with reservation and explanation I offer you for 
discussion an interpretation of the doctrine of formal dis- 
cipline from the standpoint of the science of logic. Men- 
tal training does not seem to me by any means 
the whole of education, but, on the other hand, mental 
training is not, so far as I can see, a myth. It is a theory 
which has found lodging in many minds not given to mythi- 
cal imaginings. It is a theory which, as one of the stand- 



IS MENTAL TRAINING A MYTH 131 

ard books in education seems to say, though a psychological 
absurdity, is yet obviously true as an explanation of the 
facts of mental experience. It is a theory which is, at least, 
respectable, and, however it may appear from another 
point of view, from its own standpoint it seems to have a 
meaning. 

I cannot close this paper nor consider my task ended 
until I have at least stated for your consideration the 
secondary thesis which has been implicit throughout the 
discussion. It is this — that the students of educational 
theory seem to me to give relatively far too much attention 
to the descriptive work of psychology and far too little to 
the results of the normative sciences of ethics, esthetics, 
and logic. In his keen and lucid study of educational 
psychology Professor Thorndike draws just the distinction 
which I have in mind. At the beginning of the book, 
speaking from the standpoint of psychology he says: "The 
work of education is to make changes in human minds and 
bodies." And of the mind he says elsewhere (p. 30), "The 
mind is really but the sum total of an individual's feelings 
and acts, of the connections between outside events and 
'its responses thereto, and of the possibilities of having such 
feelings, acts, and connections." In his closing chapter, 
however, after discussing the facts of the mental life from 
this point of view, he says, "A theory of education must 
decide two questions: (1) What ought people to be? (2) how 
shall we change them from what they are to what they 
ought to be?" With respect to the first of these questions 
Mr. Thorndike says, "The studies which have been made 
in this book have nothing to do with it." But it seems to 
me obvious that the question "What ought people to be?" 
is one which the student of education must keep in mind 
from the beginning to the end of his inquiry. 

First he must do so for the very evident reason that if 
he is not simply to change his pupils, but to change them 
in the direction in which they ought to go, he must know 
the ideal in terms of which that direction is defined. And, 



132 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

secondly, just so soon as he takes the standpoint of that 
ideal, the normative standpoint, he will find that the de- 
scriptions of mind which are made from the factual point 
of view are no longer adequate or true. Nowhere is 
this more clearly shown than in the consideration of the 
unity of the mind which has been the constant theme of 
this paper. For Mr. Thorndike the mind is very properly 
a "sum total of an individual's feelings and acts," etc. 
For certain other students who take the descriptive attitude, 
it is possible to say: "We mean nothing more by the unity 
of the mind than that it is not divided into faculties. The 
term can be given no positive meaning whatever." But 
just so soon as we take the point of view of the mental 
processes as directed toward a goal, as doing well or ill a task 
which they have undertaken, the unity of the mind appears 
in a sense which is essential to the statement of the task of 
the educator. That unity consists in the fact that each 
thought, each idea, is not simply conjoined with its fellows 
in a common receptacle, but that each is demanding of 
the others that they be consistent with it if they are to be 
held true and valuable in the experience of an individual 
whose thoughts they are. From this point of view the self 
is not a sum total: it is a unity. Its unity is that upon 
every mental process within its experience there is laid the 
same demand that it take its place in a system, and that it 
submit to whatever transformations may be necessary 
for its membership in that system. In a word, the unity 
of the self is essentially a normative conception. In exactly 
the same way as one may run through a book and find 
simply words, may look at a picture and find only colors, 
may listen to an organ and hear only sounds, so may one 
run through the life of the self and find simply experiences. 
But in no one of these cases have we taken the point of 
view which is most closely related to the concrete affairs 
of life, and in no one of them, therefore, have we included 
all the truth which is vital. The student of education must 
define his pupil primarily not from the factual point of 



IS MENTAL TRAINING A MTTH 133 

view, but from the evaluative point of view. When he 
does so define he will discover an experience whose unity 
appears rather in its ideals than in its processes. In my 
opinion he will find a unitary self, the training of whose 
mental processes is not a myth. 



PART IV 
THE CURRICULUM 

THE three papers here given are extracts from reports 
of the President to the Trustees of Amherst Col- 
lege. They present definite proposals for the 
organization of the course of study in a liberal college. 
On the assumption that the purpose of liberal study is as 
definite and as compelling as that of a professional school, 
these reports condemn the theory of election in college 
studies and demand that college instruction be fitted to 
its purpose. They are not content with the establishing of 
the mere possibility that an education may be secured in 
college. They insist upon at least some measure of proba- 
bility. 

The report of 1914 contains a record of curriculum changes 
adopted at Amherst College during the years 191 3 and 1914 
and also a proposal of further action. The first of the 
two extracts here given describes the most striking of the 
changes which had been voted. The second extract is a 
discussion of a tentative plan of a college curriculum as 
a whole. 

The report of 191 8 gives an account of developments in 
educational discussion and policy in Amherst College since 
191 2. Upon this account is based a proposal to reshape 
the organization of the college teaching so as to adjust it 
to its purposes. In the extract here given it is proposed 
that the first two years of the course be sharply separated 
from the last two and that each of these divisions be given 
methods of teaching and examination suited to the work 
which it has to do. 

134 



A COURSE FOR FRESHMEN 

THE most significant feature of the educational changes 
which were put into effect in the fall of 1914 is the 
placing of an elective course in social and economic 
institutions in the Freshman year. The name of the course 
has been left in vague outline because its exact nature must 
be determined by the interest and method of the teacher 
who gives it. Its purpose, whatever form it may take, 
will be to serve as an introduction to the humanistic sciences. 
We wish if possible to make students, at the very beginning 
of the college course, aware of the moral, social, and economic 
scheme — the society — of which they are members. Such 
a course should not encourage boys to believe that they have 
all at once found solutions of the problems by which their 
elder brothers are sorely perplexed; nor should it cast 
them down into the scepticism which regards all problems 
as insoluble. Its functions are rather (1) a sane, searching, 
revealing of the facts of the human situation, and (2) a 
showing of the intellectual method by which these situations 
may be understood. It should be primarily an introduction 
to ethics, logic, history, economics, law, government, and 
not in any large degree an end in itself. Such a course 
presents many problems for the teacher; for the sake of 
simplifying his task the course will be limited to members 
of the Freshman class. 

It is only fair that I say that many members of the 
faculty and of the board of trustees regard this new Fresh- 
man course as an experiment of rather doubtful wisdom. 
Their chief objection is that boys in the first year of college 
life are not ready for the examination of human living. 

13s 



136 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

They believe that such studies cannot have the accuracy 
nor the thoroughness which are needed to give the dis- 
ciplinary quality which Freshman subjects should have. 
They fear vagueness and incoherence of mental content 
and looseness of intellectual method as a result of plunging 
boys into situations by which all of us, young and old alike, 
are baffled. 

It would be idle to deny the force of this objection, and 
so far as the objection holds, the new course is an experi- 
ment. There are, however, considerations on the other 
side and they seem to me so strong as to make it essential 
that the course be given. 

In the first place, I would suggest that incoherence and 
looseness of intellectual method are better discovered at 
the beginning of the college course than at its end. As our 
curriculum is now given, one of the most common of its 
results is that not until their college opportunities are 
almost past do our boys come to realise what they ought 
to be thinking about. Every year we send out, usually 
among our best minds, boys who have at last come to aware- 
ness of the human situation, but who have had no systematic 
training in dealing with it. Such boys are dangerous to 
themselves and to their fellows. Only in much greater 
time and with far greater effort will they work out a method, 
and a point of view, the beginnings of which at least they 
might have secured during the college years. 

Again, it is just this inexactness of content, this looseness 
of method, which gives opportunity for the genuine teacher. 
If the teaching be properly done boys will perceive that 
their own thinking is a poor, silly, inept semblance of 
activity. They will be brought to face the fact that before 
the genuine human problems their information is scanty 
and inexact, their reasoning confused and inconsistent. If 
the teaching be properly done, the pupils will see what they 
have to accomplish in the three remaining years. If the 
teaching be not properly done — but it must be. 

The simple fact is that at this point the progress of educa- 



A COURSE FOR FRESHMEN 137 

tion is following the progress of the knowledge upon which 
it depends. We have had no teaching in the humanistic 
sciences because there were no such sciences. Our direct 
understanding of human experience has been given on the 
one hand through the appreciations and concrete represen- 
tations of literature, and on the other, through relatively 
inaccurate applications of philosophy and history. But 
however unwilling we may be to recognize it, it is clear 
that the new studies of human experience and activity 
are now achieving in some measure the character of science. 
In the beginnings of the intellectual life of Europe, our 
first discovery was that certain quantitative aspects of 
nature, admitting of mathematical expression, may thereby 
be brought into order, subjected to the intellectual law. 
It is not long since the activities of the living organism 
seemed hopelessly incoherent and unorderable; but we 
have succeeded and we are succeeding in dealing with them. 
And now still later the processes and conditions of in- 
dividual and social experience are being brought into some 
sort of coherence and understanding. It is true that the 
work has only just been begun — but it has been begun, 
and no one can pretend to understand the thought of his 
time who does not know what is being done and what 
remains to be done in this field. If the college cannot give 
our boys an acquaintance with this task and these achieve- 
ments, if it cannot arouse a vital interest in the intellectual 
struggle upon which we have entered, it will fail in one of 
its most obvious and compelling duties. My own opinion 
is that however difficult the task, our students should be 
set to it at the beginning of the college course and should 
be kept at it so long as, in college or out of it, the oppor- 
tunities for study are still open to them. 



II 



A CURRICULUM FOR A LIBERAL COLLEGE 

WITH your permission, I should like to suggest, in 
quite irresponsible fashion, the direction in which 
it seems to me Amherst may wisely continue her 
development. I am sure that, with the other liberal colleges 
of her kind and time, she stands at the parting of the ways 
and that critical problems are awaiting her decision. For the 
sake of stimulating the friends of the college, students, 
alumni, faculty, and trustees, to the discussion of principles 
and methods, may I sketch here the outline of a curriculum 
concerning which I have already had much discussion with 
colleagues and students. The plan is offered not as a final 
solution of our curriculum problems, but as a preliminary 
statement of a point of view which, if valid, may perhaps 
receive more adequate expression in other ways. It is offered 
not for adoption but for criticism and consideration. 



Freshman Year 


Sophomore Year 


Junior Year 


Senior Year 


Social and Economic 
Institutions 


European History 
Philosophy 

Science 
Literature 


American History 

History of 
Thought 


Intellectual and 
Moral Problems 


Mathematics and 
Formal Logic 


Elective Major 


Science 
English 


Elective Minor 
Elective Minor 




Foreign Language 


Elective 









As an invitation to discussion, I should like to say a few 
words about several features of the plan as it is proposed. 

138 



A CURRICULUM FOR A LIBERAL COLLEGE 139 

I will describe briefly each of the courses, indicate their 
relations to each other, attempt to formulate the under- 
lying principles, and then speak of some advantages which 
might follow if the plan were adopted. 

In the list of courses as given those above the lines are 
required, five in the Freshman, four in the Sophomore, 
two in the Junior, and one in the Senior year. The courses 
below the lines are elective, one for Sophomores, two for 
Juniors, and one for Seniors. In the Freshman year, the 
courses in foreign language and mathematics and logic 
should be given more time value than the other courses of 
the same year. In the Junior year, each course counts for 
a quarter of a year's work. In the Senior year, the required 
course takes one third of the time and the elective major 
two thirds of the time. 

The course in social and economic institutions has already 
been explained. It should serve as an introduction to the 
humanistic sciences. The student should be made aware 
of the situations and the institutions with which those 
sciences are dealing and should be made ready to attempt 
an understanding of what they have done and are doing. 

The course in mathematics and formal logic should give 
instruction and practice in deductive thinking. Mathe- 
matics and formal logic are alike interested in the endeavor 
to find forms of expression by the use of which meanings may 
be made more exact and more explicit. They alike recog- 
nize the fact that our deductive thinking is engaged in the 
task of giving to thought contents new forms of expression 
by which they may become better understood. In the course 
in question, the student should be instructed concerning 
this characteristic function of mental activity and should 
then be given practice in it. In geometry he will see how 
in the field of space relations meaning is developed by new 
modes of expression; algebra will give skill in the use of 
symbolic representations of various types; formal logic 
will build up the technique of accurate and coherent ex- 
pression by means of words. Such a course, following the 



i 4 o THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

mathematics of the preparatory school, should give a student 
some acquaintance with and command of the formal pro- 
cedure of thinking. 

The Freshman and Sophomore years have each a course 
in physical and natural science. My own preference would 
be that in each year two sciences be given (a semester for 
each), so that for all students there would be some knowl- 
edge of physics, chemistry, geology, and biology. For any 
proper understanding of the conditions of human living all 
four of these studies seem very desirable. My scientific 
friends, with their ideals of thoroughness and close contact 
with the facts, tell me that half year courses in science can 
give only smatterings and hazy outlines and are hardly 
worth offering. On this point I am inclined to differ with 
them. What we want for our required courses is not the 
technique of investigation, but an account of the results so 
far as they are significant for life and for knowledge as a 
whole. Such results can be given in words and, if properly 
organized, it would seem that they might be given in such 
form as to remain a valuable and significant possession. If 
my friends are right, we might have to offer students in 
one year a choice between physics and chemistry, and in 
the other between geology and biology. If they are wrong, 
we might give all four sciences in outline and in relation 
during the two years. 

With regard to the teaching of English, one hesitates 
at the present time to dogmatise. Our teachers of English 
are attempting to carry on and to combine two processes, 
each of which is by itself sufficiently difficult. They are 
seeking to make sure that students can express themselves 
in simple grammatical form. They are also offering to 
students an opportunity to enjoy the experience of literary 
appreciation. One can only say that to these tasks and 
their combination must be set the strongest and best 
equipped teachers who are available. 

The course in foreign language should be a continuation 
of an advanced language presented for admission. It 



A CURRICULUM FOR A LIBERAL COLLEGE 141 

should give to the student the experience of really reading 
a language other than his own. As noted before, it should 
have more time value than is now commonly allowed for 
a three hour course. Like the English course, it should 
have value in content as well as in the structure of the 
language concerned. As it is to continue a subject pre- 
sented for admission, one cannot determine its content 
without determining also the admission requirements. 
My own suggestion would be that we require for admission 
six year courses in language, three in an ancient language 
and three in a modern language. We could then require 
that the ancient language be continued in the Freshman 
year, and that the student be required to show by exami- 
nation his reading command of the modern language. 
Before this matter is decided, however, we need more 
information concerning the value of different entrance 
subjects. Such information we hope to secure before 
another year has passed. 

In the Sophomore year, European history traces through 
the civilization of Europe the development of the institu- 
tions revealed in the course in social and economic institu- 
tions. The course in philosophy, chiefly logic and ethics, 
studies the human motives and beliefs which underlie those 
institutions and have found expression in them. The work 
in science continues that already begun. In literature, 
the student continues one of the literatures of the Freshman 
year, English or foreign, according to his choice. 

In the Junior year, the first course continues the historical 
study from Europe into the development of our own insti- 
tutions. Meanwhile, the history of thought attempts to 
reveal in their successive forms the beliefs and purposes 
which have dominated our civilization, and correlates with 
these the scientific interpretations and, so far as possible, 
the literary representations in which human life has been 
portrayed. This course would be, in its own measure, 
an account of the intellectual and moral elements in the 
development of our civilization. 



i 4 2 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

In the Senior year, the student would be expected to 
bring together the contributions of the two required Junior 
courses in order that he may face the characteristic and 
significant problems of his time and people. The study 
of European and American institutions in their develop- 
ment, and of the thought elements underlying and deter- 
mining them, should have prepared him to form some 
opinions of his own about human living. I do not mean 
that he should be given a course in dogmatic citizenship, 
but I do mean that the religious, moral, political, social and 
economic issues of our day should be so presented and 
interpreted that a young man may begin to understand 
them, may begin to define his own thoughts on human 
problems in relation to the thoughts which other men have 
made and are making. Such a course could not be given 
by one teacher. It would be necessary to place in charge 
of it a number of teachers who might supplement each 
other, teaching by their differences as well as by their 
agreements. 

On the elective side, the plan allows one free elective in 
the Sophomore year in order that a student may be free to 
carry on some special interest from the Freshman to the 
later years. Thus he may take a second language or con- 
tinue his mathematics, or go on with his work in some other 
department within which his special interest lies. In the 
Junior year, which is divided into four courses, two of these 
are open to choice without limitation. In the two earlier 
years, all the different lines of study have been opened up 
and the student may now select two of them for careful 
and detailed study under close supervision and in small 
classes. In the Senior year, the major, taking two thirds 
of the student's time, must be a continuation of one of the 
four subjects of the Junior year. Here again the work 
would be done in small groups in close association with a 
teacher or group of teachers. In the two years taken 
together it would amount practically to a full year's work 
in a subject to which the student had already been intro- 



A CURRICULUM FOR A LIBERAL COLLEGE 143 

duced in the early part of his college life. If the student 
has within him capacity for any special interest he should 
find in such genuine "majoring" at the end of his college 
course, conditions favorable for awakening the interest to 
full activity and for developing power in furthering it so 
far as we may fairly expect it to go during the undergraduate 
years. 

Before proceeding to speak of the relations of courses, 
may I stop to note the omission of two subjects for which 
so. or ^ jrovision must be made. I refer to the teaching of 
tru\^ j arts, including music, and to practice in public 
speech These subjects are left out because the plan is as 
yet a mere sketch. In any definite scheme they must be 
firmly established in some way or other. 

With regard to relations between courses, may I call 
attention to the continuity in the series of required courses 
and in the sequence of elective courses as well. The re- 
quired studies running through the four years form one 
continuous intellectual inquiry. The courses in history 
treat of the institutions revealed in the Freshman year, 
and the Senior course discusses the problems for which 
history has furnished material. The Freshman courses in 
institutions and mathematics and logic lead directly into 
the study of logic and ethics, which in turn leads into the 
history of thought, which again gives another body of con- 
tent for the Senior course in problems. The courses in 
science lead into the history of thought, and the studies 
in literature give content for both historical subjects of the 
Junior year. In the Senior year, the entire curriculum, 
with its information, its problems, its methods, should be 
brought to bear upon the interpretation of a group of prob- 
lems which are all bound together by their common human 
interest. In the field of electives, the same relationship 
holds so far as possible. The Senior major continues one 
of the Junior subjects, which is itself a continuation of work 
done in the earlier years. 

It would be essential to the working out of such a plan 



i 4 4 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

that the college student should, at the beginning of his 
studies, be informed of the general plan and outline of the 
curriculum. To the Freshman class there should be given 
a series of lectures which would sketch the course of study- 
as a whole, giving its essential purposes and determining 
the relations of each study to the other studies and the 
curriculum of which they are parts. Such lectures if 
properly given would illumine and direct the instruction 
and study from beginning to end. They would provide 
a plan which every teacher and every pupil might be^x- 
pected to keep in mind. ed 

With respect to inclusiveness, the required confLnt is 
intended to be representative of the system of human 
knowledge as a whole. Recognizing the limitation of time 
in four years of undergraduate study, it attempts to select 
the significant intellectual inquiries and to so relate them as 
to keep the unity of the whole while establishing acquaint- 
ance with the parts. The task is not an easy one and there 
is wide room for differences of opinion. But to do it in 
some way is better than not to do it at all. One can simply 
formulate one's notion and then submit it to friends and 
colleagues for rending and reconstruction. 

The fundamental purpose of the plan is to ensure that 
every student who receives a liberal degree shall have gone 
through an intellectual procedure by which a liberal educa- 
tion may be secured. We are not content with the assur- 
ance that he has been for four years in an institution within 
which the opportunities of liberal culture are available. We 
prefer an arrangement by which those opportunities are 
made requirements. Then, recognizing the artificiality of 
our tests, we may teach and test in the hope that what 
is intended may be accomplished. 

The same principle may be stated by saying that the 
liberal college has a definite intellectual mission and it has 
no right to give its degrees unless that mission has been 
achieved. It is not enough that a student know a little of 
everything; so far as it is possible, he should be given a 



A CURRICULUM FOR A LIBERAL COLLEGE 145 

knowledge of the world, so extensive and so unified that by 
means of it he may get a fair understanding of human 
experience. It is not enough that he should have studied 
one subject three years; he should go into one field and 
learn how thinking is done in that field. I would define 
the intellectually educated man as one who can bring a 
unified interpretation of the world to bear on the problems 
of human experience, and who also appreciates how thought 
has achieved those results which have made his interpre- 
tation possible. 

Fi\ti the arrangement of courses here proposed there 
would follow a number of advantages which are perhaps 
worthy of mention. 

One discouraging feature of our present work is that, 
each course being regarded as complete in itself, the student 
holds himself, or is held by us, responsible for being in- 
formed concerning its content only on the day of exami- 
nation. If at some later time we should call on him for 
evidence of his knowledge of it, he would accuse us of 
injustice and violation of all the presuppositions on which 
his curriculum is built. But in the plan proposed, each 
course given is itself an examination in the courses which 
have been given before. If the teaching be properly done, 
it will be taken for granted that the results of previous 
courses are actually available for use, and if they are not 
available, then the work of the later year cannot be 
properly done. It would be interesting to see in this way 
each professor examining the teachers who have preceded 
him as well as the students immediately under his 
charge. 

Again, this arrangement would make it possible to take 
cognizance of differences in content and method between 
courses. As we have spread before students lists of courses 
and have invited them to choose, we have inevitably come 
to regard every course on the list as a substitute for every 
other, and, therefore, as equivalent to it. The inevitable 
result of this has been the establishment of false uniformities 



146 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

in methods of teaching. The teacher of literature and the 
teacher of mathematics are each expected to take the same 
amount of the student's time for study, to require classroom 
attendance for the same number of hours per week, to give 
the same kind of tests and examinations, to require the 
same sort of "scholarly" work — to make sure that the 
record of intellectual achievement in one course is a fair 
substitute for the record in another. But I think it is 
obvious that such uniformities and substitutions are alto- 
gether illusory. Valuable instruction may be given in 
subjects which admit of little work on which the student 
can be "tested." And there are other lines of study in 
which the teacher's activity may be practically limited to 
examining what the student has done. Some courses 
should claim little of a student's time outside the classroom; 
others can make use of far greater assignments than are 
now possible under our system of equivalents. But if we 
were teaching under such a system of requirements as is 
here proposed, the total demand upon the student might 
be compounded of whatever parts might seem best. One 
would give students work to do, not to keep them busy, 
but because the work is worth doing. And if one had noth- 
ing for them to do at any specific time, one could arrange 
with one's colleagues to fill up the gap. 

Still another advantage for the teacher would appear 
in the uniformity of his class. Under the usual elective 
scheme, one may find Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors 
in the same classroom. And again, within each of these 
groups there may be every possible variation of previous 
study and preparation. It follows from this that in the 
conduct of the work neither teacher nor pupil can take 
anything for granted. And in this way it comes to pass that 
each subject is taught without regard to any other, as a 
thing complete in itself, except as each teacher attempts by 
way of introduction some hasty establishment of relations. 
This may be the teaching of "subjects" but it does not 
give knowledge in any genuine or fundamental sense. 



A CURRICULUM FOR A LIBERAL COLLEGE 147 

On the side of the students, the plan has an advantage 
which is very important. It would unite all the college 
in a common intellectual enterprise. The modern college 
has lost for its study and teaching the tremendous social 
sanction which in the old college was given by the sense 
of intellectual solidarity. Under the elective scheme, no 
subject is essential. Why study physics hard when other 
students are getting an education without it? Why, if 
you are seeking for a liberal education, devote yourself to 
n -subject, without which other men are reaching the same 
goal Yor which you strive? The argument is bad but none 
the less convincing. But we must bring back to our stu- 
dents the conviction that they have a common intellectual 
task, that the college has a definite and compelling mission, 
to which as members of the group they owe loyal and 
enthusiastic devotion. Let us say it again — our work is 
as definite as that of technical or professional school; it 
can rightly claim equal earnestness and greater eagerness 
and enthusiasm. 

On the purely mechanical side, the plan has the advan- 
tages of simplicity. It reduces the number of courses and 
so makes much more easy the arrangement of schedule 
and all related matters. It would enable us to adjust the 
sizes of divisions for instruction on some reasonable basis. 
At present the size of a class is commonly dependent simply 
on the number of students electing the subject. But if 
courses were required of all students, divisions could be 
arranged in each case to suit the nature of the work done. 
One of our popular fallacies is that there is a certain proper 
size for a college class. But it is clearly untrue. If a 
teacher is merely lecturing or reading there is virtually no 
limit of numbers except the extent of the teacher's personal 
power. If one is directing a piece of investigation, each 
student must be taken separately. And between these 
limits there are many adjustments to be made varying with 
the nature of the subject and the method of the teacher. It 
would conduce both to economy and to efficiency if these 



148 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

adjustments could be made by choice and not by the mere 
chance of student election. 

My impression is that in every phase of our intellectual 
work teachers and pupils alike would be helped by greater 
definiteness in understanding of the work in which we are 
engaged. It would help us all to realize that we are not 
simply giving or taking courses, but are engaged in a process 
of education. In the face of a real unity in that process, 
many of our distinctions, in the ranks of the faculty as well 
as among the students, would seem arbitrary and artificial 

On the elective side, the plan would have two advan- 
tages. It would put an end to the mere gathering up of 
unrelated courses from which can be gained little more than 
a smattering of knowledge. For this it would substitute 
the choice of a definite intellectual field and would try to 
ensure that in this field the student should do a piece of 
thorough, sustained, and systematic study. Such a "major- 
ing" in the Junior and Senior years might be expected to 
establish (i) habits of intellectual work, and (2) an intel- 
lectual interest which, whether or not sustained by pro- 
fessional activity, would remain as a permanent element of 
culture and inquiry. 

As I leave this proposed plan for your consideration, I 
must apologize for saying so much concerning its supposed 
advantages. May I say again that the plan is presented 
simply for criticism, and its claims have been set forth in 
the hope that counter claim and attack may reveal its 
defects. The plan does express certain principles in which 
I believe. But those principles are open to challenge. 
And even if they were valid, it is clear that this embodiment 
of them is a mere sketch which can become a plan only as 
it is torn apart, put together again in new forms and with 
needed supplementation, subjected to all the generous in- 
terpretation and criticism which men give each other when 
they are working together in a common cause which is 
more important to them than is their own discussion of it. 



Ill 

A REORGANIZATION OF THE COLLEGE 
CURRICULUM 

THIakc iger one attempts to devise a liberal training by 
the additions and combinations of courses, the more 

JL one becomes convinced that addition is an illusion 
and that courses are the chimeras of an imagination pervert- 
ed by the categories of mechanics. Twenty courses do not 
make a college education any more than twenty legs make 
a man, or twenty heads, or even ten hearts, two legs and 
eight fingers. And in the same way three courses do not 
make an intellectual interest, an experience of the actual 
process of the working mind. Something is wrong with the 
terms, something is radically wrong with the process of 
combining them. 

What is the trouble? It seems to me very clear that the 
concepts of quantity and measurement have wrecked the 
organic unity of the college course. In making elective 
courses we have felt the genuine need of uniformity and so 
have established units in terms of which to measure. And 
having established our separate units of subjects, courses, 
departments, we have felt free to pluck them out of the 
living organism one by one, to substitute one for another, 
and then to put them back supposing the life process to be 
still rushing on in spite of all our interruptions. 

If this be true, then no re-sorting of the courses will gain 
the ends we seek. Rather, it seems to me, we must re- 
think our terms and reconsider our procedure. I am 
inclined, therefore, to recommend to the Trustees and 
Faculty of the college a fairly fundamental transformation 
of its organization. You will not find in this suggestion 

149 



150 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

the slightest hint of any change of purpose. You will, 
however, find a strong conviction that the college organiza- 
tion in which that purpose finds expression is quite inade- 
quate. I am proposing, therefore, that a new one take its 
place. 

As we have postulated two aims in the defining of a 
liberal education, so I would, in good mechanical form, 
propose the division of the college into two separate colleges, 
a Junior and a Senior College. And if it be at oiye retorted 
that this is a vicious mechanical separation in purpose _a«d 
in method, then I would reply that the division into two, 
if discreetly made, is not so bad as a division into twenty, 
and further that, in spite of bad appearances, this division 
of ours is not to be mechanical — never shall we take these 
colleges apart or try to substitute them for one another in 
any known relationship. 

But now to state our plan in sober, honest terms! Our 
purpose is, we say, to set men on the road toward liberal 
education. And liberal education seems to have two 
aspects: (i) that of general apprehension of the culture of 
one's race and (2) that of feeling of the actual process of the 
mind by which that culture has been made and still is in 
the making. These aims are always present wherever a 
liberal college is. But they are often obscure in content and 
so hazy in outline as to be mistaken one for the other. Men 
say "any course of study properly pursued is liberal" and 
so they take some ten or twenty courses, each of necessity 
improperly pursued and call the process liberal. Men 
say "a little of everything and everything of something — 
that gives a liberal education." But they forget that 
knowledge when made up of "everythings" and "some- 
things " is not real knowledge at all — not knowledge in 
the sense of wisdom or of understanding, nor even knowl- 
edge in the actual process of its making. 

It seems to me essential that these two aims should be 
kept clear and kept apart for fear that either may be lost 
or either substituted for the other. I would propose, 



REORGANIZATION — COLLEGE CURRICUL UM 151 

therefore, that we establish them and build them into the 
very structure of the college course. Let us have two 
colleges instead of one, or better two in one, the first ex- 
plicitly devoted to the general aim, the second, in greater 
part at least, given up to special studies, and both together 
mastered by the common aim of trying to understand and 
share the labor and ecstacy of human knowledge and 
human apprehension. 

How shall it be done? In its most external aspect the 
college is, of course, an institution which, having instructed 
students, or perhaps not having instructed them, examines 
them in order to determine whether or not to give them a 
degree which certifies that they are, in some sense agreed 
upon, educated men. In this external sense, one college is 
one set of examinations with all that thereunto belongs. 
If then we should establish two examinations, two sets of 
tests, we should in this external sense divide the four year 
college into two parts, each of two years. From this 
would follow various results as to our methods of teaching, 
methods of study, methods of life. According as men are 
to be examined so will their modes of living be. Two aims, 
two sets of examinations; hence two colleges — that is 
the program. 

I would propose then that at the end of the sophomore 
year we establish a set of tests or one comprehensive test 
to determine whether or not in their two years of college 
work our students have been making headway toward 
intelligence, toward culture, toward an apprehension of 
human knowledge as a whole. And at the end of the 
senior year we should have a second test which, taking 
the first for granted, should try to discover what students 
know of some one field of knowledge, what work is done 
within it and what it means. Passing the first examination 
would give admission to the Senior College. Passing the 
senior test would qualify a student for his degree. 

It would be essential, I think, that such examinations be 
set, not by the teachers who have given the instruction but 



152 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

by an examining board appointed for the purpose. Teachers 
would still continue to give their tests at the endings of 
courses, and passing one's courses might be made a pre- 
requisite for admission to the general examination. And 
the Board of Examiners might perhaps include some of the 
teachers of the college whose work is being examined. 
But in principle it seems to me courses and examinations 
should be kept far apart. The Board should set its tests 
not on the basis of courses taken but by the guidance of an 
end to be achieved, a type of education to be realized. We 
should examine the student, not his knowledge of the 
courses he has taken. 

I should like now to suggest some of the advantages 
which it seems to me such an arrangement would bring 
about in the two colleges which are established by it. 



THE JUNIOR COLLEGE 

The first advantage of the arrangement in the Junior 
College would be the clarifying and validating of what the 
college community means by culture. It would give to the 
younger members of the community a compelling sense of 
something that must be done, some quality that must be 
taken on, some power that must be gained, some sensitive- 
ness that must be won. There is now no such compelling 
sense of common purpose and requirement in our conglom- 
erate arrangement of courses. In a recent pronunciamento 
of the largest association of colleges in the United States, 
it was argued that since the concept of liberal education 
has no generally accepted meaning, a given subject might 
just as well be included in the college course as any other; 
apparently no one could tell the difference in the result. 
And if our college authorities are in a haze like this, there 
is no wonder that freshmen and sophomores feel no com- 
pulsion of a clear and definite purpose driving them on. 
But we must have just that to make our college work 
worth while — a recognition by us all that there are certain 



REORGANIZATION — COLLEGE CURRICULUM 153 

things which one must know, must feel, must see, must 
understand if he desires to be regarded as a member of this 
community. Unless he does the things we do and loves 
the things we love, he is not one of us. I think perhaps we 
might regard the Junior College examinations as a matric- 
ulation test, the college having given a man two years in 
which to show that he may rightly claim a place as one who 
is her own. 

And may I hasten to say that the merit of such an exami- 
nation as this would lie not in a great severity. I see 
no reason why it should be in general quality harder than 
any of the tests we give at present. The elimination of 
many students by rigid tests might easily be done. But I 
am not convinced that education by such elimination is the 
thing most needed in the American colleges just now. There 
would be much to be gained in private satisfaction and in 
high quality of scholarly achievement by the elimination 
of all students except the very best. But that is not the 
gain most sorely needed at the present time. Our task, 
the most important task, is that of taking the average 
American boy and those above the average and trying to 
make of them men of cultured power. No one doubts that 
this work can be done for boys of unusual gifts and aptitude. 
But what can be done in general? What are the possi- 
bilities of cultural education in the country at large ? That 
seems to me the urgent, the almost terrifying question 
which now confronts our colleges of liberal education. 
May I say again, therefore, that the merit of this examina- 
tion would be, not in this or that established degree of 
severity, but in the setting of a standard as such, in the 
making clear that "liberal" has a meaning which cuts like 
steel between the groups of those who are and those who are 
not liberal sophomores. 

At this point there is a question which I know is quite 
inevitable. "Upon what subjects will you examine at the 
end of the sophomore year? The student has passed his 
courses one by one and answered questions on them. Will 



154 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

you ask further questions on these courses? Will your 
examination mean a grand and general review?" May I 
try to answer the question in two parts, distinguishing 
between the method and the content of the mind with which 
the examination is to deal? 

If we were examining the intellectual method of a soph- 
omore to see what sort of man he is there are, I think, 
seven main questions which we should like to ask: 

1. Can he and does he read books? 

In books is gathered up the culture and knowledge 
of the race. A boy who has not learned to go to 
them, to live in them, to understand their meanings, 
is not, in method at least, upon the great highroad 
of education. 

2. Can he express his own thoughts in writing? 

3. Can he speak clearly and accurately? 

4. Can he listen to and understand another's speech? 

5. Has he a sense of fact, distinguishing from facts the 

mere suggestions which are not yet established? 

6. Can he derive an implication, draw an inference, and 

see what implications and inferences do not follow? 

7. Has he a sense of values by which to feel, to appreciate, 

to recognize the things worth while from those not 
worthy of our choosing? 

These are, so far as method is concerned, the questions 
I should like to ask about a sophomore seeking admission 
to a Senior College. They indicate the qualities of mind 
which make for education. If one has gained these quali- 
ties I think we might admit him to special studies of a 
liberal sort. If not, it is a sin to let him think, however 
many courses he has passed, that he is on the road to liberal 
education. 

And on the side of content we should again try to discover 
not so much what he has done with courses as what courses, 
and growing, and being himself, have done to him, what 
sort of man he is becoming. He should be examined upon 



REORGANIZATION — COLLEGE CURRICULUM 155 

his knowledge of literature, of natural and humanistic 
science, should be expected to know the essential things in 
them which are the common stock of men who are trying 
to interpret the world in which they live. And further, he 
should appreciate and understand in some degree the pur- 
poses and attitudes of men of letters, of scientists, and other 
thinkers, should know what tasks they undertake, what 
methods they adopt, what results they have achieved, 
and what, in general outline, they now propose to do. 
Such an examination would require knowledge of the 
subjects taught and studied in the courses, but it would 
imply as well a student's independent reading and thinking 
about his subjects. It would, I think, relegate the courses 
to their proper place as moments in a process of acquisition 
and understanding, a process which every student must be 
carrying on himself, a process which the entire community 
accepts as that by which it seeks its purpose of liberal 
education. 

Such an examination could not be given by one man nor 
in one day. It would require a Board of Examiners and 
would inevitably extend over two, three, or four weeks. 
It would include written examinations, tests, reports, con- 
ferences. It would put into explicit and regular form such 
queries and associations as one would wish to have with a 
young man whose intellectual and personal quality one 
might wish to determine. 

But now to return to the listing of the advantages of 
the Junior College examination! We have said that over 
against the separate courses it would set up the demand 
of the college as a whole for Tightness of method and Tight- 
ness of content in the teaching and study. There are some 
other advantages perhaps not so important. 

I think the improvement which would be brought to 
sophomore study would be very great. The sophomore 
is our least responsible student. The enthusiasm and the 
docility, perhaps, of the freshman year have somewhat 
lessened. The ending of the college course is still three 



156 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

years away. The goal toward which it leads is far and 
indistinct. The sophomore is not under pressure. Such 
a test as we have outlined, expressing a demand that must 
be met at the ending of the year, summing up the activities 
of the two years in one compelling purpose and interest — 
such a test would in my opinion transform the sophomore 
year. If so, it would give gain where now our loss is great- 
est. For many students it would prevent the breaking 
down of the college course. 

Another gain would be, I think, that of placing upon the 
student the responsibility for the getting of his own edu- 
cation. The college would give no guarantee that courses 
would cover all the content of the general examination. 
In the last resort, a student should find out for himself 
what demands the community lays upon him; he should 
see that the doing of daily tasks assigned with daily regu- 
larity is good but childish. He should undertake to make 
himself what the college approves, should use his courses 
and his own self-directed studies as instruments for getting 
ready for the tests which the college is to give him. In 
the years from eighteen to twenty-three one should be 
getting something of the self-reliance of a man. Our 
present procedure tends too much to keep the students 
young in will as well as in intelligence. 

Still another gain would come in the relations of teachers 
and students. The present process tends toward being 
one of handing out and then demanding that the thing 
received be given back again. The teacher is at the same 
time examiner. But if teacher and pupil were alike pre- 
paring for a distant test which neither is to set, there would 
be more of comradeship, of teaching and discipleship than 
we have now. 

I hesitate to speak of gains so far as teaching is concerned, 
for, out of my own experience if in no other way, I know 
how jealous teachers are of their independence, how much 
they cherish their sovereign right to teach as they think 
best. And in a certain field of their relations I would not 



REORGANIZATION — COLLEGE CURRICUL UM 1 57 

yield to any one in fighting for the teacher's independence. 
But independence at this other point of which we speak 
is nothing else than anarchy. May I then suggest two 
gains that might be won for teaching. 

First, I think that the separate courses taken by any 
student for a common test would find proper relation to 
each other just through their common relation to the 
common test. Each course would find itself called upon 
to play its proper part, each teacher would need to know 
what other teachers were doing, each would assume the 
work of other teachers as joining with his own. At present 
one teacher knows another's work by gossip, often by idle, 
inaccurate gossip of undergraduates, hardly ever, if at all, 
by genuine conference. A demand of unified knowledge 
accepted as the standard of the Junior College, enforced 
by an examination for membership in the community, 
would bring about, I think, some understanding of the 
common task and hence relating of the various parts within 
the unity to which they all belong. 

Another gain for teachers would be that in some measure 
their teaching would be tested. On the whole it is not 
good for any man to keep on doing work on which no ade- 
quate judgment of approval or disapproval is ever passed 
by competent authority. The tests implied in student 
popularity, in the number of student elections in one's 
courses, in the promotions or refusals of promotion decreed 
by trustees and presidents, these do not satisfy our college 
teachers. They have many, many better reasons for dis- 
gruntlement. But one important cause of discontent lies, 
I think, just in the lack of any sense of right appraisal of 
their work. The men who publish find their judgment 
among their fellow scholars who do not hesitate to speak 
their minds. But men who teach mark their own teaching. 
It takes a fair amount of self-esteem to keep one's courage 
up. And so I think that an objective test would give relief 
and on the whole much satisfaction. 

I am sure that there would be great gain in the separating 



158 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

of Freshmen, Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors into distinct 
groups in the arrangement of their courses. If only Soph- 
mores were taking the courses of the second year, and if 
all Sophomores had taken the same or equivalent courses 
in the previous year, both teacher and pupil would profit 
by the uniformity. The course could then be made to 
lead from something in the past to something in the future. 
It would not be a mere detached unmeaning fragment 
beginning from so many different sources that it has no 
common source at all, and leading into so many different 
directions that the word direction loses its meaning. The 
course would tend to be part of a scheme of training, a 
common training for a group of men seeking the same end, 
and hence following the same road and traveling together. 

There would be, I think, distinct gain in administration, 
in the simplification of arrangements of hours, schedules, 
and other like matters. The separation of Freshmen and 
Sophomores from upperclassmen in class enrollments would 
give a genuine gain. If, as would be practically certain, 
Freshmen and Sophomores were separated from each other 
in the arranging of classes, our present difficulties as to 
schedules would disappear. Perhaps in this way the 
amount of administration in the colleges might be reduced. 
I am sure that very much of the time of administrative 
officers is spent in reconciling the conflicting desires of 
anxious teachers. Strangely enough, it usually seems that 
they, the administrative officers, have the desires from 
which official denials spring. But in any case, probably 
to the gratification both of teachers and officers, we might 
in this way diminish administration. 

For teachers and students then it seems to me the pro- 
posal of a Junior College is worth considering. It would 
pledge the community to an end and to a standard. If 
successful, it would make the concept of general liberal 
education a definite one. That concept is compelling 
enough if only it is perceived and understood. If then, as 
I think it would, this proposed arrangement should bring 



REORGANIZATION — COLLEGE CURRICULUM 1 59 

our common purpose into clarity and definiteness, it would 
set us on the road we seek and I am inclined to think that 
we should travel it in gay and serious fellowship. 



THE SENIOR COLLEGE 

The determining motive of the Senior College would be 
the second of our aims, to bring a student into actual con- 
tact with the working minds by which the knowledge and 
apprehension of mankind are made. This opportunity 
would be open to men coming successfully from the Junior 
College. Here they would find a greater freedom, greater 
responsibility, and more urgent obligations. My impres- 
sion is that corresponding to the improvement of attitude 
in Sophomore year would come a definite gain for Juniors 
and Seniors, first from the sense of freedom and personal 
initiative and second from the compulsion of the higher 
intellectual comradeship into which they are received. 

In the Senior College a very considerable part of the 
student's time would be given to one major interest. What 
does this mean? It does not mean that the work would be 
confined within what we now call a department. It does 
mean a group of related studies, taken from several depart- 
ments, but all bound together by some common interest 
and so fusing together in terms of some central inquiry 
or investigation. The nature of this would of course vary 
with the field. 

It does not mean that the student is to enter a profes- 
sional school at the end of his Sophomore year. The col- 
lege has given very few professional courses in the past and 
my impression is that it will give fewer rather than more 
of them in the future. I am not saying that a student's 
choice of his major might not be influenced by the profession 
which he has in view. Probably in many cases this would 
happen. But I do mean that during the college years the 
organization of the courses will be in terms of intellectual 
interests and problems, not in terms of immediate practical 



160 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

pursuits for which specific preparation is needed. Here 
of course is one of the great educational issues of our time 
which I must not stop to consider at present. May I say- 
simply that the policy of the college thus far seems clear 
and definite upon the issue; we are a non-professional 
college — but very practical. 

But now positively, what does it mean? I am not willing 
to dogmatise with great specification until we have had 
further opportunity to examine the procedure of colleges 
in which like experiments have been made. I am sure, 
however, of several points. First, the major should be a 
course of study arranged under the direction of one teacher 
or a small group of teachers in related fields. Second, it 
should be regarded, not as a group of lectures or courses to 
be taken, but as a study or reading or investigation carried 
on by the student, to which the lectures of teachers contrib- 
ute so far as may be. Third, it should have such unity as 
to admit of a single test upon it all at the close of the course. 
Fourth, it should be pursued more informally than our 
present courses, but under the immediate direction of some 
teacher, acting individually or as representative of a group. 
Fifth, it should culminate in some report, some thesis, or 
record of investigation, or in an examination which should 
give final evidence of the student's ability and achievement. 
Sixth, the doing of satisfactory work in such a major field 
should be required for a degree. 

There are two beliefs involved in this proposal. First, 
Juniors or Seniors in college are or can be made mature 
enough in mind and purpose to take on genuine intellectual 
responsibilities; it is a sin to keep them children. Second, 
such intellectual responsibility calls for a different, a more 
informal relationship between teacher and pupil than is 
desirable in the earlier years. 

Such a majoring plan would again postulate a scheme of 
independent examination for the testing of results. There 
would not be, of course, such general examining as that 
upon the work of the Junior College. But there ought to be 



REORGANIZATION — COLLEGE CURRICULUM 161 

in each field the submitting of the evidence of the student's 
work to some independent and recognized authority in that 
field for judgment of its worth. The student should be 
informed and record made that he has or has not done 
something which men of his years and opportunities may 
reasonably be expected to do. 

It is hardly necessary, I think, to speak of the advan- 
tages of such an arrangement. The values to students 
and teachers alike are clearly obvious. For students, the 
greater freedom, the close association with a small group of 
men of like interest, the immediate acquaintance with and 
direction by a small number of teachers, the demand upon 
one's powers which comes from the acceptance of a definite 
task, all these would stimulate as well as enlighten the 
student mind. For the teachers, the reduction of the 
amount of formal instruction would be a gain. There 
would be danger that much time would be taken in informal 
instruction but this would be so much more near to the 
teacher's own study that it might in many cases be of help 
rather than a hindrance to scholarly pursuits. Certainly 
there would be more of genuine satisfaction in it. 

The real question as to such a plan is not, Is it desirable? 
but, Can it be made to work? And the question is not one 
to be evaded. But my own conviction is very strong that 
the thing can be done. I am certain that it ought to be 
tried. It is better to see what can be accomplished along 
such a line than to wait ignobly for some one else to make 
the attempt. As Socrates, in Plato's Euthydemus, when 
told that in the process of becoming wise a man must lose 
his ignorant life, ofFers himself for sacrifice, so may the 
college do. A death like that would be a noble ending, 
the sort of ending from which many splendid enterprises 
have sprung. 

I have spoken of the "major" interest in the Senior 
College. It seems clear that this interest should not claim 
all of a student's working time. Until our plans for majors 
are made more definite, one cannot tell just what the 



162 THE LIBERAL COLLEGE 

minor arrangement should be. I would suggest, however, 
that three fourths of the time be given to the major and 
one fourth reserved for the minor interests. In this case 
it would be necessary to provide in the Senior College 
courses for men not majoring in the fields in which they 
lie. It would be essential also to provide that the minors 
be taken outside the major fields. I should not now be 
willing to go so far as in the Report of 1914, requiring all 
students to take, in junior year, the history of thought and 
American history, and in the senior year, intellectual and 
moral problems. But it would seem to me essential that 
the general interest which controls the Junior College 
should not be wholly put aside. At least we should main- 
tain a balancing of interest by requiring study outside the 
major field. It would not do to let our special study drive 
away the fundamental aim which we would make it serve, 
the aim of so knowing and feeling our human life and men's 
interpretations of it that one is free in living it. We must 
remain in general apprehension as well as in special study 
a liberal college. 

CONCLUSION 

There are many details to be worked out before such a 
reorganization as I have proposed could be adopted. The 
most fundamental and the most difficult is that of the 
establishing of Examining Boards wholly or in part distinct 
from the teaching faculty. This separation of the two 
functions of teaching and examining is not in one sense 
essential to the plan. Clearly the Junior and Senior Col- 
leges could be set apart each with its own peculiar work, 
each with its own preliminary and final examinations — 
this could be done without so sharp a separation between 
teaching and examining. And yet the separation is sug- 
gested by the plan and would in my opinion contribute 
largely to its success. How far are we willing to go along 
this line? Are we ready to establish two Boards of Ex- 
aminers correlative with the teaching Faculty? If so, 
shall the Faculty participate in the appointment of such 



REORGANIZATION — COLLEGE CURRICULUM 163 

Boards, or shall it be wholly in the hands of the Trustees 
and President? This is a set of issues difficult to deal with. 
They are to be met for the sake of the realizing of the pur- 
pose of the college. 

As I close this discussion, I can merely call attention to 
important questions which are bound up with the project 
which we have been considering. 

The required studies of the Junior College would pre- 
sumably not differ radically from the present requirements 
of the first and second years. I think that we are approach- 
ing settlement of the questions regarding the studies of 
these years. 

The reorganization proposed would have great effect 
upon our dealings with the members of the Faculty, those 
now with us as well as others to be appointed. For the 
trying of a high experiment we must have men of high 
ability and courage. It is the primary task of the college 
to make its provision for teachers conformable to the 
demands upon them. 

There is no implication in the plan of any radical change 
in our methods of admitting students. Such changes 
might be suggested by later experience but they are not 
apparent now. 

Before such a plan could be put into operation it would 
be essential that we make careful study of like attempts 
in other institutions and in other countries. The most 
radical change in the conduct of the teaching is in the 
system of majoring in the Senior College. Here we must 
go carefully but with not too much delay. 

To sum it all up, may I say that the cause of liberal 
education is crying aloud for intelligent and resolute sup- 
port. It will not do just now to stand on the defensive. 
Liberal teaching must be established. If this is to be done 
we must go on; we are just emerging from a period of vast 
confusion and distraction in educational theory and prac- 
tice. It is a time for knowing what you propose to do and 
how it is to be done, — and for doing it. 



A FINAL WORD 

EVERY point of view is both negative and affirmative. 
On the negative side it is a protest against other 
opinions. On the affirmative side it is a realization 
of its own meaning. As a last word, then, one may very 
properly attempt to characterise the beliefs which one abhors 
and the faith upon which one acts. 

The underlying antipathy of these papers is directed 
against specific devices in education. When we consider 
the immense expenditure of time and ability devoted to our 
educational machinery how shall we explain the general 
ineffectiveness of its working ? The only explanation which 
seems to fit the facts is that our various specific activities 
are counteracting and nullifying each other. The cult of 
the specific is always a dangerous one. He who seeks to 
cure a specific evil by the application of a specific remedy, 
without understanding both evil and remedy in wider 
terms, invites disaster. Such cures create diseases greater 
than those which they destroy. It has been recorded of a 
certain man that after all his evils had been cleared away, 
the latter state of that man was worse than the first. If 
we would avoid such disastrous remedies as this we must 
beware of mere devices: we must attempt to formulate 
our task and our procedure, each as a whole. 

On the positive side these papers have contended that 
if one would know how knowledge is to be taught then one 
must try to know what knowledge is. Just as a teacher 
cannot bring a pupil near to learning unless he is near to 
it himself, so one cannot understand the teaching process 
unless one understands what it is that is to be taught. 
Our teaching must be based upon a comprehension of what 
learning is, of the nature of knowledge and of wisdom in 

164 



A FINAL WORD 165 

relation to human living. There is nothing more futile 
than the attempt to teach liberal culture by means of 
teachers who are not liberally educated. It is equally 
futile to try to impart understanding of human life and of 
the world if we are not ourselves striving for such under- 
standing and making some progress toward its accomplish- 
ment. In the last resort, let it be said again, it is the 
purpose of education to make young people ready for 
living human life in this world of theirs. In order to do 
.that we must try to understand both them and their world. 
On that endeavor we may found our attempt at Making 
Minds, and so venture to enroll ourselves as members of a 
Liberal College, 



